An Unwelcome Catharsis
by Chyme for the Rhyme
Summary: Koh the face stealer, had slithered through dreams for centuries, all to leave tragedy in his wake. But it's once he decides to infect Ursa's that things come to a head. And Katara is left behind to deal with a nightmare.
1. I saw your eyes, and your stare

Down the dark halls Ursa raced, her hair streaming out behind her as the tapestries of fire and lords, too blurred to be distinct, rose up from their awnings to grab at her arms. Ursa panted, yet managed to keep running without the familiar burn of pain in her lungs to hobble her. The floor was dark and made no sound when her feet touched it, yet it still swam like silk under her legs as she continued to race.

On and on she went, and up and down, came her arms, rowing against the red fabric that sought to touch them, thin sticks of white that rose and fell in her line of sight like sputtering candle flames, too weak to fight back against the surrounding dark.

Then there were tugs at her hair, small, unmistakable hands, no bigger than Kiyi's, yet the voice that accompanied them was years out of date, falling into the same, sickly croon that had haunted her for months, ever since her first daughter had tracked her down and held her up against the wall of her new home.

'Stay, Mother, stay. You love me enough to do that, don't you?'

Ursa gasped, froze, and tripped as the tapestries wove round her wrist and manacled her to the walls. She was stretched thin between the halls she had once pretended to own, walking through them as though Ozai was far, far behind, and now here she was, dangling like a loose thread. She narrowed her eyes and tried to peer into the gloom. Something was there, shifting in the dark.

'That's a charming face you have there,' came a new voice, deep and purposeful. It made the familiar fear creep though her, the fear that was always awoken at the sound of Ozai's voice, no matter how far she had left him behind in the past. 'Far better, I must say, than my mother's work. She should have kept it.'

Yes, there was definitely something there in the dark. And it was slithering closer.

Ursa woke up with a start.

* * *

'What's wrong?' her husband asked her, in the morning.

'Is something bothering you?' her son asked, over lunch.

'Mummy!' Kiyi demanded in the afternoon, cheeks puffed out. 'You're not paying attention!'

'Sorry darling,' Ursa said softly, placing the brush down on the table with a gentle clink. And felt guilty, in a strange haunting way, when Kiyi looked instantly appeased. 'Why don't you show me again?'

Kiyi grinned and punched the air, a wide arc of flame sprouting from fist. Ursa smiled and made all the necessary noises, cooed and clapped and stifled the unease inside her at the fact that she had managed to produce three firebenders, despite the fact that her Grandfather 's ancestry had produced no such spark for her or her father. She might write Zuko and Azula off as being products of the Royal Family's natural talent, but Kiyi, she could not.

She forced the smile up on her lips and tried to forget all the times Azula had stopped showing off for her and whether it was _then_ that she showed more interest in taming her daughter's hair than her spirit. And she watched _now_ at how Kiyi's smile stretched wide and delighted when Zuko helped correct her stance, how he taught her wide, flowing movements that he called the 'dancing dragon.'

'That's such a cool name,' Kiyi chirped enthusiastically. 'And it looks so pretty!'

He gave an awkward smile. 'I'm glad someone seems to think so.'

Ursa's smile turned more real, more solid at the sight. She hadn't failed. Not entirely. One of the children she had abandoned under Ozai's care hadn't withered away. Now if only she could believe that one day Azula would return to her, similarly unscathed. But she doubted it.

* * *

Ursa dreamed of fire that night, fire painted blue, like the water that had lapped at the roots of the Mother of all Faces.

'Give it back!' she called up at the impassive spirit. 'Give it all back!'

There was no answer and Ursa woke in a sweat, in a tumble of sheets that were wrapped around her like the tapestries that had caught her in the nightmare before had been. Her husband was at her side, his body uncommonly still, no snore escaping his form, and when she turned to check on him, that familiar rise of breath that Ursa had lain beside, night after night, was missing. She gripped his hand tight, in a panic as his face suddenly soared up out the gloom in front of her, suspended by the coil of shadows from the ceiling and the insect-like legs that waved and clung to the wall.

And then she screamed.

Her husband's face smiled back.

* * *

 **Notes:** If you haven't read 'The Search', 'Smoke And Shadow' and 'North And South' comics, you might be a little lost, as this fic refers to some of the events that happen in them. I, myself have seen various opinions about the comics, which I get. I have a fair few, myself.

However, I will say this: I adored the 'North And South' series and it did everything I hoped and more with the depiction of Katara's character. Especially her struggle to reconcile her nostalgia and feelings associated with her mother, to the change her father and the Southern Water tribe was going through. It felt very real to me. This story, I guess, is sort of like an ode to that comic, and perhaps Katara in general.


	2. Met it firmly, and was lost,

Katara was at peace. She wove ribbons of water through her arms, wrapped them round her stance...and promptly cut a pot in half in less than a second. Suru's mouth made an 'o' of astonishment as the resulting tatters of clay fell apart, the grey motif of waves that had decorated them crumbling to the icy floor as Siku cheered and Pakku frowned.

'I would have preferred it if you hadn't destroyed a pot I spend weeks dragging back with us, after my honeymoon,' he said dryly. 'Though I appreciate the demonstration. Your transition from the arching eagle-albatross, to the sea-otter's swipe, is far smoother than when I last saw it.'

 _The best I've ever seen from any of my students_ was left unspoken – it was in the way he had refused to insult her movements, when he would have grimly torn apart all the mistakes the boys he had taught her to fight against a year ago, would have made. Yes, Katara was well used to the intricacies of her former master...but she still felt a slight shame touch her at his raised eyebrow.

'Sorry, I mean I would have chosen a different target, if I had known that.' She mentally cringed at how much like Sokka she had sounded in that moment.

'No way! Destroying stuff is cool!' Suru assured her. 'All Siku and I can do with our waterbending is make patterns and little rivers and well...' she faltered and then brightened instantly. Katara could practically see the mental exclamation point appearing over her head when she straightened, much like Sokka did when a fit of _genius_ struck him. '...We make the best snow fights ever! But we've never been able to cut anything other than actual snow with it before! And I wanna learn.'

Katara felt her shame rapidly being chased away. It was true that Suru and Siki were miles ahead of her in terms of their waterbending, than when she had been their age. But then it was also true that she had had no other waterbenders to bounce ideas off and practise with, not to mention the fact that she had had far less free time, constantly cleaning and cooking and sewing, as her hands tried to make up for all the chores her mother's absence had left behind. So it was nice to feel their appreciation. And besides. Without a master to guide them, their experimentation had hit walls that she and Pakku now needed to guide them over.

'It's all in the palm and flick of the wrist,' she assured them. 'I found it difficult too at first. But with enough practise, you'll be cutting up objects in no time!'

Pakku raised an eyebrow.

'...Within reason. And under our direct supervision of course,' she amended quickly, chastising herself. Who did she think she was, _Toph_? Still, it was dizzying, to know that she was no longer the only Southern-born waterbender in existence, and that she had the chance to pass the tradition down to them. _All_ of them.

Her eyes fell on the tapestry in the corner, of a wolf turning to the moon with a howl. Both tribes had stories involving wolves and their nobility, but this picture was clearly depicting a Northern legend, the steep towers of ice and thick, waterbended canals in the background a dead give-away to where the scene took place.

Katara took a breath. Then she turned and moved.

And so did Pakku's expression, into confusion and then a soft, wondering appreciation, as the water glided round Katara, drawn out from nothing more than thin air. Then she dragged more water into it, out of the floor this time, the snow crumbling into liquid at the pull of her chi, before she curved her fingers, pushed her legs forward, and took up a stance he had never taught her. She moved round, her youth giving the move a quick nimbleness Hama had been unable to keep up, and rolled the water into a curling shield that turned like a wheel around her.

'Cool,' Suru breathed, as Siki immediately tried to imitate it and would up pelting herself in the face with water.

'I see you've picked up some new tricks,' Pakku stated as Siki spat out a mouthful of liquid and glared at her sister who had now turned and covered up her traitorous snort with a gloved hand.

Katara paused. 'No,' she said firmly, letting the water drift away, back into its natural foundation. 'I just found a new teacher.' She hesitated. She had hated Hama, for what she had done. But the knowledge she had given her, the parts that hadn't involved manipulating the liquid in another person's bloodstream, were the vestiges of a tradition the Fire Nation had tried to cull. And she would be damned if she let her feelings about Hama deny her passing that tradition on. Wan Shi Ton's library was gone, after all. There was no one else to ask.

Pakku, for his part, looked curious enough to ask, but Katara was saved from answering by the bang of the door and the worried expression on Aang's face as he charged in, his eyes sweeping through the scene before they landed on her. And as always, they softened into a clear, honey-bright focus.

'Aang?' She had already stepped forward, his worry infecting her, making her hands urge to reach out and offer a consoling pat or hug; whatever it was he needed from her, she would gladly give.

'It's Zuko,' he said, his words punching the breath out of her chest. 'Or at least, it's his mom.'

* * *

The journey was swift, shadows and waves passing out of sight as Appa's bulk flew them through the night. Everything was forgotten, buried down, the disappointment of Suru and Siki's faces and the questioning expression on her Father's, even the stern way Pakku suddenly took up the room,his presence engulfing the atmosphere like a sharp chill of wind as he guided their two students away, telling them firmly that they still had basics to commit to memory.

Because Katara still sometimes forgot what it was like, to be confronted by adults, to be reminded of the missing height and years between her and them. It never made her feel small just...wilted. Like there were still things she was lacking.

She felt like she was lacking them now, the sensation of her stomach being dragged out of her by the rush of the flight suddenly dropping in, inside her, like a stone, as they landed directly in the palace courtyard. Then there was a blur of green and brown, a flash of white and soft red, as Suki rushed over to Appa, Katara feeling a chill as the familiar war-paint over her features refused to hide the worry governing her expression. Sokka was already out of the seat, making a slide out of Appa's fur as he practically fell into his girlfriend's arms, and Katara joined them seconds later, barely a moment after Aang floated down, airbending softening his leap into something magical, like a gentle, slow-falling step.

'What happened?' he cut in, looking angry in the way she was used to seeing on Zuko.

But all Suki did was look back at him helplessly, though Katara was glad to the similar gleam of stubborn fury alighting in her eyes. 'As far as I can tell, _nothing_ , no break-in, no human sign of infiltration. There was _nothing.'_ Then she let out a bitter laugh. 'Of course, I guess we can hardly be surprised. It's obvious nothing human did this.'

That's why we have Aang,' Sokka said, indicating said person with a quick tilt of his head. 'Resident expert in all things spooky that refuse to obey the rules of science. Well, I guess technically speaking, he's the _only_ resident expert. In our world at least'.

Aang was not in the mood for frivolity though, already striding ahead. Katara could hardly blame him.

'I know who did this,' he said, had repeatedly said in Appa's saddle, his face grim and woven into lines of solemn anger; ancient anger. 'I know exactly who did this. And I won't let him rob me again.'

Zuko was pale, his face stressed, with only the royal hairpiece helping to give his appearance some form of neatness.

'Thank you,' he told them, letting his arm rise up and then fall, as though he was struck by the sudden thought that he didn't know what to do with it. He finally settled on making the offer of a weak smile. 'Thank you all for coming.'

'No sweat,' Sokka replied. 'I mean spirits meting out unfair, so-called 'punishments?'' He trapped the word in air quotes. 'Who else are you gonna call?'

Katara glared at him but was saved from making a retort by Suki's elbow firmly pushing it's way into her brother's ribs.

'Ow!' he yelped, before catching hold of Zuko's crestfallen look. 'I mean, Team Avatar is going to save the day, get your Mom and her husband's face back, all in time for a tasty, hopefully magnificent, no-expenses-spared feast, provided for by our rich, Firelord member!'

Sokka wasn't nearly as insensitive as his flippant tone made him sound. His smile was classically Sokka-bright, but stretched a little too wide, and his hand at his side was carefully covering the edge of his boomerang, even if he was playing it off as a classic I-don't-care, hand-on-hip gesture. Katara, well-versed in the art of her brother, knew this was about him offering comfort in one of the few ways he could.

'Trust me,' Zuko said. 'As soon as we get my mother back to normal, I don't care how many coffers we empty; she's having the finest food this palace can produce.' Then he paused. 'And _maybe_ , I'll let the rest of you have the leftovers,' he adds gently, directing a small smirk Sokka's way. Not heart-felt but genuine enough.

Sokka grinned. 'I'm an uncultured peasant. I'll take what I can get.'

'Food can wait,' Aang broke in tersely. Then, with a sweeping bow and pressing his curled fist against his palm, he inclined his head towards Zuko. 'I'm sorry,' he said softly. 'I know who did this to your mother. I don't know why, but I will do everything in my power to fix it.'

Zuko gave a wry smile. 'Koh, right?'

Aang stiffened, not entirely in surprise and Zuko shook his head. 'It doesn't take a genius. We were all there, with Misu and Rafa. We saw What Koh did to her brother. Maybe Sokka's right. Maybe this is some sort of punishment; from what Misu told us about how her brother liked to steal things simply to prove he could; and about you said about one of your my past lives losing someone to Koh, I'm guessing that Koh has a rather vindictive streak. If that's the case, I imagine he'd have some strong thoughts regarding my family.'

Sokka snorted. 'Then why not steal your Dad's face? If anyone deserves it, it's him.'

'Because nothing would change,' Aang answered gravely. 'As long as Ozai or someone who thinks like him had access to the throne, everything would go on the way it had before; they'd just be a new face governing things. But Zuko's different; he's _trying_ to be different, someone who's willing to learn, to change. Punishments don't work if they don't affect those left behind.'

'Even if they're not really punishments,' Zuko added lowly. 'Just acts of cruelty, dressed up and 'justified' as such.'

Aang nodded, agreement in every line of his face. 'Koh has fancied himself a judge too long,' he said coolly. 'And Zuko's right; this isn't punishment, this is just cruelty. And we're going to put a stop to it.' He made a beeline for the chamber that led to the Fire Sage's area of the palace, the part decorated to the ceiling with fancy scrolls, their ends rolled up and dipped with fine-leafed gold.

Katara smiled and placed her hand on Zuko's shoulder. 'Toph's spending time with her father; we sent a hawk to her, so I'm sure she'll do her best to come as soon as possible. We just wanted to get here as quickly as we could so we didn't stop off for her and besides...' she hesitates. 'Things are...strained between Toph and her Father. The last time we all burst in on him doesn't exactly bring up pleasant memories for us. We didn't want to interrupt unless necessary. But,' she added, eyes firm and steady on Zuko's. 'That doesn't mean you're not worth the effort or we're prioritising Toph's relationship with her Father over yours with your Mother.'

Zuko looked at her. 'You don't have to explain anything,' he said steadily. 'Family is important. I would never try to deprive anyone here of spending time with their own.'

He turned to follow Aang and Katara was left with an uncomfortable feeling of loss, as his shoulder pulled out away subtly from her hand.


	3. Because away from your care

Aang sat in the centre of a gold dragon, its jaws falling open round the quiet tuck of his robes, his boots pressed firmly against it's teeth. It's clay-baked tongue stuck out like a root under the place his legs crossed, and Katara watched as he fell into himself, the tranquil expression on his face so at home with the glow of his arrow that her breath caught. He was so beautiful like this, and had been growing even more so these past few months, all as he gently passed over her in height; and she knew she was lucky, she really truly was.

Because with Aang she had fallen into a fairytale romance, something she had only read about in her passing moments of freedom growing up. Gran-gran had smuggled a few favourite novels, dog-earred and worn down with her when she left the Northern Tribe, and occasionally merchants would dock at the South, offering a book, some new spin of the same old cliché, of a man and woman meeting in odd, sometimes legendary circumstances and growing closer together. Sokka would roll his eyes at it but it was a genre Katara loved, no matter how cheesy it was, and she made no apology for it.

Aang lived up to her expectations. And she hoped she lived up to his. Even if everyone else seemed a bit discomforted by the way they snuggled into each other and took peace in each other's presence, Katara couldn't help but feel dizzy with it all, with Aang's warmth, his smile. More importantly, she deserved it.

Just like Zuko deserved his mother back.

'Aang will find him,' she repeated for the fifth time in several minutes. 'Aang will find Koh.'

Zuko's expression didn't change. Neither did Aang's. And Katara felt it, the restlessness, the urge to console, to help. There was no one else here to do so; Sokka and Suki were busy scouring the Palace, Sokka determined to put his oh-so-impressive detective skills to work in trying to seek out anything Suki might have missed.

'There's not,' Suki had stated firmly, but that didn't seem to prevent her from humoring him. And who knew, after all? There was no harm in retreading old ground. Sometimes things did resurface.

Katara turned. She asked Zuko quietly where his mother was. And then, trying not to feel his eyes digging into her back, she walked out of the hall and past the paintings where legions of Fire Lords glared down at her, feeling small and blue and stubborn all the while, beneath the weight of red, gold and orange on the walls. She was like a tiny fish slipping through the cracks of the stones that rested at the bottom of a raging river. And she couldn't help but feel proud and defiant as she did so.

 _I beat you_ , she thought smugly. _You tried to beat my people into the ground, smother out our bending, but we're still here. And we came back years later, to help wrestle you down into your corner of the globe._

 _But that's not fair_ , she thought suddenly. Plenty of Firelords hadn't invaded the South Pole or the Earth Kingdom. It was only three generations of them she needed to condemn. She turned and looked Sozin right in the eyes as she passed. Ozai was the one she felt personal hate for, but it was Sozin who had wiped out Aang 's people, who had first commanded the raids on her home to begin. He, who had inadvertently driven Aang into her arms a hundred years later.

 _We won_ , she thought at him, then turned and walked away, to the granddaughter of the friend he had left to die.

* * *

The skin was smooth, unblemished under the glow of blue Katara passed over Ursa's...lack of a face. It was creepy, _wrong_ ; the lines of life, of chi, continuing to flow with strength beneath her palm. All the usual passages she directed her water over ebbed against her will like any living thing used to functioning on it's own, and she could feel how undamaged they were, allowing Ursa to live; if this was what you could living.

That didn't stop Kiyi from glaring at her suspiciously from the corner of the room, arms wrapped round the knees she had brought up to her chest. She was a small, sullen thing, wrapped in shadow, with only the light from the window allowing expression to fall over her face and cast a razor-sharp focus at Katara.

'I'm not hurting her,' Katara found herself assuring her. 'Don't worry, Aang is doing everything he can to get your parents back. He won't let you down.'

Still; it couldn't stop the shudder of unease racing through her as she fell the way the usual web of chi fell short of her expectations, all the parts that should curl and fall under the usual folds of facial muscles, practically shorne clean away. Ursa was here, but not fully. The same for Ikem.

There was a creak and the door swung open. Katara looked up with a wan smile as Zuko pushed his way in, a tired expression on his face.

'Hey,' she said softly, letting the glow fall from her fingers, because there was no point; there was nothing she could do for Ursa, not while part of her was lost. She wanted to do more, say more, but couldn't. She felt like asking, offering, would be to make a promise she couldn't keep.

Zuko stared at her, eyes dull. He opened his mouth, then caught sight of Kiyi. 'I...maybe this isn't the best place for you,' he managed and his sister stood up, defiant, tears budding at the corners of her eyes. The faint traces of sunrise from the window made them glimmer gold from within, like beads of jewelry.

'No!' she shouted, stamping her foot. 'This wasn't the best place for _us!_ Why'd you have to come and spoil everything! I was just getting used to Mum having a different face and then she loses it! And now I've lose Daddy too! All because you made us come and live out here!'

Zuko's face crumpled with guilt, but Kiyi had had enough; she fled past him, nearly tripping over the long drapes of his robes with a stray, spilled-out sob. Then she was gone, racing out into the darkened hole of the corridor which seemed to swallow her whole within seconds.

Katara looked at Zuko sadly and then strode away from her patient's side, suppressing the small tinge of guilt as she did so. 'I'll go after her,' she said. There was no offer in her voice, but Zuko's hand seized her shoulder as though she had made one anyway. 'No,' he said. 'You can't help her with words.'

'No,' Katara agreed. 'But talking to someone who's in pain isn't about curing or fixing it; it's about softening it, and letting them rest a while, so that they can function. Keeping so much anger bottled up is exhausting.'

Zuko shook his head, a wan smile touching his face. 'Aang's lucky to have you,' he said, before letting his hand fall from her shoulder. He sighed, his eyes traveling past her and the expression on her face to land on his mother's empty one, left coldly blank like an unfinished statue. He seemed to gather himself, push a breath out through his nose, and then walked over to her silent form.

Katara stayed frozen, the swish of his robes sliding softly into her ears like the rustle of a scroll, or a book beneath her fingers.

 _I was lucky too_ , she thought as she tried to shake it off, walking quickly so she wouldn't be tempted to turn and watch Zuko's face as his eyes fell on the prone form behind her, now a doll to everyone else's movements. Ursa could still be made to sit and have a bath, even join them for dinner. But she wouldn't eat, couldn't eat, and her chest remained still, all the breath from her last meeting with Koh still locked up inside. She was just _there_. And unable to be the mother Zuko had only recently managed to re-find.

Katara couldn't imagine going through the same thing with Kya.

 _Yes, lucky_ , she thought again. Because didn't Zuko realise that she was simply doing the same for Kiyi as he had done for her, back when he had listened to her vent, tell the story of her mother's last moments, the moments she had left Kya to face alone? No judgement, and his words, when he had spoken, had been for Kya and Kya alone.

'Your mother was a brave woman,' he had said, instead of a meaningless 'I'm sorry.' And okay, yes, maybe they had been for Katara too. But they had mainly been about a benderless woman standing up to a bender, someone who he might once have thought of as a lowly peasant.

And Katara would never forget.

* * *

Perhaps bravery was alive and well in her veins; perhaps courage was truly something she had inherited from her mother. Because when she awoke later in the night, to see Ursa's face stretched above her, the dark hair and gold eyes smeared like a constellation against the sky-like stretch of the grand ceiling above, she didn't choke and scream. She merely gasped, the shock curling up from her throat on a puff of air as her eyes widened and the shadows came swooping down, the insect legs digging into her face as a massive weight buried her against the bed.

Katara was terrified. She had sometimes had nightmares about being pinned against the bed by someone taller and stronger like her; especially on her travels round the world before becoming a waterbending master. But what held her down was not a man, but a thing, a hungry spirit, who as far as she was concerned, deserved only fear and no respect. She felt dizzy, pulled away from herself as the pain started to abate, and she felt herself lift and float. Dreamily, she peered around through the swirling mist that sparked and flowed through her eyes like the chi she had moulded beneath her fingertips as she worked to heal bones and ease pain, and detect life, even behind a pane of skin that should host a face-

Katara came back to herself abruptly and _oh_ , the pain was terrible again, even though less than a second had passed. Koh's talons, his legs, whatever they were, dug into her forehead, her chin, the very boundary of her cheeks, but she couldn't scream, because her face felt numb, and she couldn't even feel the shape of her jaw to move it. Her arms were crushed beneath Koh's bulk, her wrists pinned by something other than human fingers, and with a massive effort, she twitched them, forced them to move. She might not be able to feel her face, but that was nothing, _nothing_ , compared to the pull of the moon she could feel outside.

Without breathing, because she was only left with the hollow of her throat and the remembered sensation of a mouth, she reached out for it, for the blood. But there was no response to her will, and then she felt like an idiot because, _of course_ , while Koh was _real_ and _here_ , he was also not of flesh and what filled him was not reddened water, but something far darker and older, not rooted in physics and biology. But Katara still pushed and pulled, with tiny twitches of her fingers, movement that could only summon thin slithers of ice from the air around her. That didn't stop her from drawing her paltry weapons against the side of the thing holding her though, even if they broke apart and melted instantly.

And Katara could see it, with eyes that were both there and not there, through the mist that held her from her body, even while she was still inside it, all the chi that rolled through the air. The bed was a shadow, she was a shadow, and Koh was the eclipse, the block against the light in a way that shouldn't make sense.

Katara summoned her water drops again and made them bob uncertainly in a tiny circle, then pushed them round and round, faster and faster, tried to push her own chi inside it, out from the pathways in her body Yugodu's training had made her memorise. Push out, pull round in the circle, push out, pull round in a circle, until it was calm and steady, ready to fight and drain away the dark chi she could see or feel encompassing Koh from within. It was something she would not have thought to do, or even _seen_ to do, without this new sort of vision in front of her, the mist and the shadows that held unreal colours. A flicker of purple sprouted out of the dark shadow that was Koh and drifted out to touch the chi she had placed inside her water; it was as though it was curious, trying to imitate the pulse of chi she kept steadily racing through the water. But an instance later, this development made Koh draw back and spit.

And just like that, the pain vanished.

And Katara? Katara, much to her everlasting shame, fainted.


	4. And suffering the cost

Wind roared through the room, spread her hair, and pushed her into awakening. She woke inside Aang's arms holding her tight, her head buried beneath his own as though to hide the smooth pane of her face away, as the hasty air wrapped round the bed and made it quake.

'Aang, Aang, no, calm down.'

'I'm so sorry, so sorry, Katara...'

Katara was awake. But she did not blink. She did not speak. But she tried.

 _Aang..._

But he did not hear her. Everything was grey. Not black, the way she had thought true blindness to be, what Toph would have been stuck with without her bending, but...there were shifts and shapes in the grey and the veins of the world bloomed, pressed out into sharp relief against the inside of her head. It was like her eyes were simply closed, and she could see the blood within her eyelids beat red as she turned towards the sun. Except there was no sun here, just chi and it's multilayered pathways, the ones she had been taught to shape and mould when another person's life rested in her hands.

She could see the nest of chi that was Aang, huddled over and around her, bold and striking around the lines of chi that were her own. True, she could not see his eyes or her fingers, but still, she felt herself place her hands against his face with perfect accuracy; how many times had she, after all, offered him relief from a headache by pressing her water against his temples? She was a healer before a girlfriend, and so now tore water from the air and held it against the very same places she had nursed countless times before.

It was all she could do.

The winds fell at her touch like magic, and the bed creaked as it landed with a dull thud, barely pulled out of place. As did her water a moment later as Katara gave into the impulse to hug Aang, to draw him close against her.

'Katara...' Aang's voice said wonderingly and Zuko's joined it moments later.

'She can _hear_ us.'

And then suddenly the lines of Chi that made up her brother were there, and they shifted into hers with a bustling clarity that was so him that she wanted to let a laugh escape her. She couldn't of course; she had no mouth now, but the feel of his arms landing solidly round her shoulders was a comfort all the same.

'I knew it,' he said thickly. 'Count on the bossiest waterbender on the planet to stop a face-stealer from taking away her ability to tell everyone else to calm down.'

Katara gave him a strong rap on the head for that one.

* * *

Walking was a chore. There was no chi in the wood and stone of the floors and walls; or if there is, they were muted, sluggish things below Katara's senses. She had learned to heal by feeling the networks of chi that boiled and beat within a person, someone who moved and lived loudly...but these other things around her, they did not exist in the same noisy way. So it was only those flickers, those bright lines of life alone, that were all she had to guide her now. Each step was a laborious twist of sensation, of the prickle of a rug, or the cool slap of stone, sometimes even the rough blistering feel of timber. She could not reach into the earth and feel every resounding echo of movement the way Toph could, she could only follow the caged coils of chi within the people she loved as they guided her round the palace.

It was discomforting not to feel any hunger though, even when Sokka chewed noisily by her ear, despite Suki's hiss of ' _try_ and be more sensitive!' next to them both. She was glad at least, that she could still feel water in a sense; it did not have the multi-layered veins of charka the way people did but she had always felt its presence the way many benders did with their own element. And when she called for it, with a gesture or a stance, it came. She just...couldn't aim it at an inanimate object with the same unerring accuracy as before.

Kiyi had gasped when she had seen her and Katara remembered her words to her the day before, all her assurances and false platitudes, and now felt sick. Kiyi would probably never believe another word she said to the girl ever again. Well. That was, if she ever found a way to get her mouth back.

So Katara continued to live, but did not breathe, in this strange new world for two days while Aang tore through the Spirit World in his quest for Koh. And then Toph showed up.

* * *

'Stop smothering her,' she instructed, when she saw Zuko leading her round the Turtle-duck pond. 'She knows where the water is, she's a _waterbender._ If she wants to get wet, let her get wet; it's not like she can't get herself dry again. Sheesh, people who can see are _weird_. One of you literally loses your eyes and the rest of you lose your minds as though you're trying to play catch-up. Earth to everybody: that always makes things worse. _'_

Katara could picture the way Zuko flushed and went stiff at that; it was all in the way he dropped her hand as though it was a hot rock at Toph's words. If she could, she would turned and given Toph a good glare before saying, _actually, I appreciate the help; I don't like stubbing my toe ten time s at the odd pieces of stone that poke through the grass, and unlike you Toph, I can actually_ _accept_ _help._

She didn't of course. Mostly because she couldn't. So instead she made a shooing motion at Toph with her right hand and picked up Zuko's fallen hand with her left, curling their fingers together firmly. She felt him stiffen up instantly and realised her mistake, loosening her hold slightly and hoping Mai wasn't nearby. The girl had been a quiet presence in their lives, though still a helpful one. Couriers were less likely to bother them, with her flint gaze idly resting on them, and apparently she had now taken to patrolling the Palace, the clink of knives in her sleeves acting as a reassurance to those who valued her skill. Katara felt oddly comforted when she stood by and heard the clink Mai purposefully let drift through silk and cloth to her ears. How times had changed.

Toph made a disgusted sound. 'Urgh, this feels so creepy. Usually you'd have chewed me out by now. We definitely need to get your voice back, if nothing else.'

Katara raised her free hand and made a rude gesture, one she had learned by attending those ridiculous Earth Rumble Arenas Toph liked to go to from time to time. Sokka always pled with her to go with him as a 'wingman' when they were in the area. She supposed she should be flattered; there probably weren't that many brothers out there who thought it cool to drag their little sister to watch what was, for all intents and purposes, a beat-down.

Zuko stiffened again, but not in a bad way, in a way that made his hand tense with a jump against her own. A moment later Katara heard him snigger, a noise he hastily worked to push down. Toph, of course, made no such effort.

'Ha! I knew you secretly enjoyed watching people beat each other up!'

 _Do not,_ Katara thought crossly and felt angered by how much like a petulant little girl she sounded within her own head.

'Still,' said Toph gravely. 'This won't do at all.'

* * *

'You want us to take them to the swamp?' Aang echoed dully.

Katara could picture his listless expression and it made her wince. Zuko still held her wrist, having guided her to a cushion she could knell on; it was like he had forgotten the feel of her skin, locked as it was within his grip, and she pressed back, the slight weight of her thinner arm against his, serving as both a warning and a grounding mechanism. Dimly, she wondered if both them subconsciously saw each other as an anchor of sorts.

'Or, you know, _maybe_ we should go back to the Mother of faces?' Toph ventured, sounding like she thought everybody was being very, very thick. 'So we can, _you know_ , get her to return their faces, the way she did with Zuko's Mom and that watertribe guy's? Seriously, do I have to think of _everything_ round here?'

'And what's to prevent Koh from stealing back the faces we get the Mother to give back to us?'

Mai's voice spurted out into the gloom of Katara's existence like a shot and the waterbender jumped, her side re-brushing Zuko's a little more more firmly, firmly enough to awaken her senses not only to the quick flash-fire thrill of his body-heat, but also enough to cause a sharp surge of guilt. She almost drew her hand away right there and then, but Zuko's grip tightened. Strangely, it tightened.

'Besides,' Mai's voice droned on, no sound of emotion to accompany it; or at least not one Katara could detect. 'From what you've all told me, it took a serious amount of pouting to get that spirit to do you more than a single favour in the first place. What makes you thinks she's going to decide to be so generous this time round?'

' _Pouting?_ ' Katara heard Sokka's voice ask incredulously. But still, Mai had a point.

'And it won't solve the main problem of Koh appearing here and taking whatever he wants,' Zuko added as though to reinforce Mai's first point. 'The guards are all testy; which is what happens when you patrol the corridors for a spirit that you're told can steal your face at the first sight of emotion, and well...' he hesitated and gave Katara's hand a small, comforting squeeze. 'It's not like we can ask Katara how she managed to keep herself here.'

It was true. Katara had tried to scrawl words down on parchment from muscle memory alone, and while no one had said anything insulting, she still got the impression that the letters she had tried to etch out had atrophied into a messy blot of ink. It was all in the way her brother had said 'hmm' with an actual appreciative air and stated, 'huh, well maybe you do share a little of my artistic talent after all. Too bad you have to close your eyes in order to use it.'

The fact that her hand writing now resembled her brother's infamous drawings was not a cheery thought, at all.

And there was no way to show what she had done with her waterbending without an angry spirit to test it against. And the thought of trying to draw the pattern of another human's chi out to match her own in the same fashion left her feeling sick. It felt a little too much like blood bending to let her feel at ease with it.

'I still think we need to go somewhere more spiritual than this place,' Toph argued. 'I know Koh keeps popping up here, but he's obviously working on his own schedule. We need to force him out, to face us; so I say we take the fight to him, in a place where weird spirit stuff happens more naturally. If he's trying to punish us, he'll follow us out there and we can smash him down. The problem with Twinkletoe's little spirit world journeys is that you're basically turning an awesome Avatar into a non-bender against something that's powerful enough already. We could do without making the job easier for him!'

It seemed nobody could agree. Katara felt her heart sink with every second of wasted breath. A breath she could not even accompany with her own. It felt as though her lungs had been locked into stasis, stuck between the moment she had woken to see Ursa's face above her and the moment Koh had rid her of her own.

She was tired. And she wanted the thief to pay.

* * *

There was no easy way to tell how much darkness had passed; enough for everyone to fall into an uneasy sleep? Since her attack, they had all taken to sleeping together in Appa's stable, despite the protests of practically every other Fire nation palace worker. It was weird, like traveling back in time, the night air on her face, and the knowledge of everyone else resting beside her, making her remember other frightening times, back before the war was won. The imprints of their bodies were wedged into Appa's side and the bales of hay nearby like they were trying to carve thick footprints into the world with their measly mortal weights; she could tell by how closely their chi networks were wedged against Appa's larger one, practically crashing against it.

Katara slept, or rather didn't sleep, with Aang's hand in her own. He was wearing himself ragged, trying to save her. He always would.

 _I love you,_ she thought, feeling the truth of that statement sink into her. _But do I love you the way Dad loved Mom? Or the way he now loves Malina? Or was I pretending to know what he talked about, when he told me that true love, the kind that lasts, doesn't blind you, but allows you to see?_

She got up. And let Aang's hand slip from hers. If she could, she would have given him a kiss on the forehead.

Then she felt out the clumps of Appa's fur, using the net of his chi to guide her, dragging herself up, one handhold at a time to his back. She couldn't tell him to 'yip-yip', but if she got up to the top, she could slide down again, onto the side where her brother was; and he would never wake up for anything.

It was hard, to work her way out of the stable. Barely anyone was around, and her heart, though it barely beat, was about to stutter in fright at the idea of meeting anyone who would flinch as the sight of her, who might let out a shrill scream when they saw she had no eyes to stare back at them with. She banged her shin against a fountain twice, hugged the wall of a courtyard she could only vaguely remember the overall size of, and pulled herself along with a series of determined tugs against the warm stone that bruised her hands.

'Where do you want to go?'

She stiffened, not entirely surprised when she felt Zuko slip out and overwhelm her with his presence. She had seen something, grey and murky overhead, but it hadn't brightened and arranged itself into familiarity until after he had dropped down from the tiled overhang of the ceiling above her.

'Your brother tried to pull the same stunt on me once,' Zuko said musingly. 'Neither of you are very stealthy.'

Katara thrust out her arms in outrage, and with one sweeping gesture, pointed to the patch of skin where her face should be.

'Then let me be your eyes,' Zuko stated quietly. He stepped forward and tugged at her hand. 'Now: where do you want to go?'


	5. I grew out into myself

How very romantic, Katara thought drolly. Though to her credit, Zuko hadn't laughed when she had ripped her hand from his, bent down and started waddling like a half-starved arctic hen. Though she _did_ hear a slight choke from him when she jutted her elbows out and thrust them up and down to imitate wings.

'The turtle-duck pond,' he had said, a strange quiver in his tone; probably stifled laughter, Katara thought grimly. It had been one of the most embarrassing moments in her life by _far_. 'I mean, I _was_ just going to trail you all over the palace until we found where you wanted to go,' Zuko continued, far too airily for Katara's liking. 'But I guess we'll get there faster now.'

True to his word, they did. The only hesitance in his steps was due to her own stumbling ones as her boots brushed against the timber boards that formed small pathways beneath little roofed passageways, ones that cut through some of the gardens like spokes in a wheel.

'Easy,' he said once, his tone grave and encouraging as she slipped, her hands flailing out to his for balance. 'Careful,' he added, another time, when her knee came in contact with a large rock and knocked against its surface a little too hard. She had stopped and seethed, and Zuko, with a small, muttered 'excuse me,' had lifted her bodily over it, all with one artful sweep of his arms. Katara hadn't panicked, not exactly, but it had still made a surge of terror sweep through her at how divorced she had felt from everything, with nothing but the whisper of cloth and the hard press of Zuko's arms inside them. If he had held her longer, it would have been easy to forget that...well. Katara was purposefully not going there.

'Sorry,' he muttered as he let her down, a hint of flustered breath behind his tone, and on any other day, with a hint of sun and a world of colour between them, Katara would have smiled, or at least taken a bit of embarrassed pride at stirring such a reaction from him. Now she felt like a heel.

'But hey, at least there was no danger of any rocks crushing you this time,' he added with a bit of a nervous laugh. And Katara fought down the urge to rip water from the air and splash him with it. She didn't like to be reminded of the time they had spent together at the Southern Air Temple, or the way she had felt anger claw at her breast each time she had laid eyes on his face. Some of it had been deserved, but part of it now, she could see, had been mislaid and shoved at Zuko in place of Yon Rha, the face that truly haunted her nightmares for years, in a way no other member of the Fire Nation had managed to accomplish.

As it was now, she simply gave a mental huff, shoved at him impatiently, and tried to clamp down on her disappointment as he released her.

'Yeah...' she heard him mutter. 'Guess it wasn't that funny.'

Their walk after that felt a bit awkward, and it was with a tiny surge of relief that Katara let go of his hand as soon as she sensed the water in the turtle-duck pond pull at her senses. She stepped forward, glee catching at her as she stretched out her arms in preparation. Because she had come to _practise_ , not fawn over a prince.

Zuko didn't leave. But he didn't speak either. Not even when she made a halo of water rotate above the circumference of the pond and tried to push her chi into it. Over and over, she tried to remember the pattern, the pulse, of what she had done with Koh. Again and again, round and round, but it felt useless without something to encircle, to draw its orbit out and harmonize with.

 **'You should stop.'**

Heat blasted out over her, over to where the unwelcome voice had come from. It was from Zuko's fire, no doubt, and given the familiar map of chi she had been confronted by two nights ago, Koh had come to join the party.

She didn't even stop to think. Her arm flew out and a large whip of water sailed out with it, smoothly uncoiling and detaching itself from the rotating circle she had arranged above.

'Stop!' thundered Koh; but there was a wince in his tone, so either her whip had connected, or he was suffering from the fireballs now pelting his side. Zuko apparently, wasn't letting up; Katara could see the web of him, his chi bright and racing as it darted out from spot to spot, ducking and weaving, and just barely quick enough to dodge the lighting-fast lunge of Koh's much bigger web. It was as if Koh was a massive python-cobra and Zuko was the mouse-bat, without the wings.

The thought quickened Katara's movements and she hurtled spikes of ice towards the place Koh's chi lines had bunched together like a spring, in preparation to push himself forwards again. He hissed and ducked and Katara heard the shattering clinks of ice shattering against courtyard stones, as well as the duller thuds of the ones meeting dirt and pinning down grass, instead of the enraged spirit.

And then suddenly Koh was before her, all of him, every line of chi branching through his coils, which he then hastily dropped down around her. Katara flailed and spun round, water rising up to spin along with her, but Koh was quicker - like a true python-cobra, his coils quickly fell into place and he began to squeeze.

Katara's arms snapped to her sides at their pressure, and the water she had driven up to cut at the body that now bound her, fell down with a splat into the grass. Like a set of useless knives.

'Katara!'

Zuko's cry was all passion, soaked through with the same desperate emotion that had once made him yell and take on Azula's lighting for her. They were in a different part of the palace tonight, but Katara's heart still seized in fear at the sound all the same. No face could possibly stay blank when it was torn open by such a yell, she thought, and now surely Koh would see it and steal it away!

But...

'Tricky Lord,' Koh snarled, or at least the top part of him did, where the chi snarled and sparked and ended in multiple dots. There were hundreds of them, so unlike the places where chi thrived in human heads, that it was dizzying to Katara. Maybe, she thought dimly, it was simply a representative facet of the multitude of faces he commonly wore.

'Wearing a hood,' continued Koh with a conversational snarl to his voice. 'And wrapping fabric over your mouth; so clever, boy. But the emotions in your eyes would be enough for me to catch you if I wanted. But I **don't**.' This last word was punctuated by a thick thump and Katara saw the pattern of Zuko's chi fly out away from them both.

'The perfect prize,' Koh purred, wrapping round her tighter as his attention and his voice shifted closer to her head. 'The Avatar loves you; which is more than enough incentive for me to take you. But then so does the little lord. A little, oh, what was the destructive word you people use to describe it? A **crush** that grew and grew. Faces sought over, fought for, by more than one mortal, make for such exquisite offerings. Ursa's was the same, even if only one of the muddy humans chasing her loved the thing she was beneath it.'

Katara saw it then with perfect clarity; Koh's cruelty, his need to make Ursa gasp with horror at the sight of the one man she had actually loved, being taken away from her within the palace that had once been her prison. They had all been wrong. It wasn't a punishment. Just petty spite.

'If I cannot claim the Avatar's face, I will take the ones who would help create his future,' Koh said, sounding surprisingly mellow. 'One from the descendants he abandoned, and one who he would wish to create more with. That they are faces so richly desired, makes it all the more sweeter.'

Pain suddenly broke into Katara, and washed her thoughts away. And all because Koh gave one subtle squeeze with his hulking coils. 'What did you do!' he hissed into her ear, the dots at the uttermost reaches of him, the ones only Katara could see, twinkling like stars, as he leaned in close enough to kiss her. 'What did you do, the night you managed to keep some of yourself from me? What was **that** , waterbender who awoke my greatest foe?'

 _Aang_ , Katara's mind supplied helpfully. _He means Aang. They always do._

And at that thought, Katara felt rage boil up within her. Because. How. **_Dare._** He!

She promptly drew her head back and thrust it forwards, straight into the mask-like blend of a ceramic demon face. Or at least, that's what it felt like she did. Because it _hurt_ , the cool, not-quite stone feel of it _hurt_ , enough to make Koh roar; but that didn't stop Katara from drawing back and trying again. This time though, her heart gave a weak flutter as her hair became tangled with sharp teeth, the hot breath of a wide-open animal mouth pasting her forehead that had shoved forwards, but now met nothing but space. For a spilt second, she believed Koh would bring his jaws together and crack her head open like an egg, shredding her between his new jaws; but then heat washed over her and a thin, slim bolt of something that seared and crackled shot over her bent shoulder. It smelt like the charred ruins of Zuko's robes the night Azula had struck him down.

But this time the lightening hadn't come for her.

Koh choked and spasmed, lightening roaring down his throat, the crackle of it splitting to twine about his form, and race over to Katara's body; but then Zuko was there, arm bunched round Katara's chest, as his fingers jolted outwards, his spare arm working to form a bridge from her heart to the sky. Katara gasped as an inferno passed through her, feeling the electricity roar through her veins and leave her as though she were an afterthought. But her limbs still twitched as though fire played through them all the same.

'Hey,' Zuko told her, sounding absolutely wrecked, 'You're gonna be okay.' Then he started dragging her back, clumsily kicking aside every coil and curve Koh still had wrapped around her. They fell from his feet loosely, with not even a token of protest.

Katara shuddered, still feeling a bright, savage tear in the centre of her, at the shock of coming so close to death. And with that revelation, she forced herself from his arms, so suddenly that they both fell.

'Hey!' she heard him cry out, actually sounding kind of hurt; but Katara had no time to spare for that.

Arms whirling above her head, she forced the water round Koh in a loose circle, savagely whirling it round and round. Perhaps she was not in the best frame of mind for such a thing, but she still found it within herself to reach down inside her and methodically tear off chucks of her own chi, to feed it into the water with forceful pushes and then pull it round, into the halo. And then she pushed and pulled again, matching it to the purple beat of Koh's sluggish chi. Gradually, like a magnet drawn to another, Koh's chi drifted and clung to her own, to all the parts she pushed into the water.

Zuko sucked in a gasp behind her and then suddenly –

 _Light._

* * *

Katara...blinked. Saw...

...navy blades of grass beneath her feet. _Saw_ : the sky, black and heavy with stars. _Saw_ , **_felt_** **,** the chi in her water, the way both it and Koh glowed, light shining through to create a solid gold band.

And felt a little like how she imagined Aang must feel sometimes.

But she was no bridge between the worlds. No, this time, she was the knife, drawn and sharpened, to divide them.

Koh groaned by her feet. Katara blinked again, seeing their shape emerge out of the dark, thin and lean, boots made darker by the hue of the night. She almost stumbled. Then Zuko's hand was clutching at her shoulder, the firm line of his fingers giving her the strength to regain her balance.

She caught the quick line of his glance, soft and gold, with enough concern to match her own. Each pane of his face was highlighted by the light that poured from Koh, flickers of warm orange seeping into every curve and slide of his bone structure. She wondered what she looked like to him, her skin darker, so much closer to the hue of the earth than his own. She knew now that he probably found it pretty. Then she pushed the echo of Koh's words away, all his rants about Zuko's...crush, to be dealt with later in the space of her own head. When she was hopefully alone.

Her eyes left Zuko's, pulled away from the memorising shape of his face. And landed on Koh, their one candle in the dark. He was still gold, still glowing, flickers of it pooling out to land at their feet. Almost daringly, Katara's eyes pushed themselves up to land on his face, ready to flinch away at the sight. And were oddly comforted when they saw nothing but a blank mask there, like the ceramic kind they used in theatres, white, with no smile or frown to decorate it.

'Mother,' it said softly, the lips barely moving. 'Who was...am I, without you?' Then it, no, _Koh_ , sighed. And, like ash, like snow beneath heat, he split apart into hundreds of pulsing lights that crept and sank out into the grass.

'Is he..?' Zuko trailed off.

'No,' said Katara, and then fell to her knees, water splashing to the ground and losing its glow as her hand came up to tear against her scalp. It practically ripped over her forehead, the violent force of its movement coming to a halt as she lay trembling fingers against the swell of her eyelids and the bulge of her cheeks; already, she could feel the tears form and fall beneath her actions.

'Hey, uh...' Zuko was beside her instantly, kneeling beside her small form as his hands danced over her shoulder blades nervously, not quite daring to touch. 'It's okay. Breathe. You're back.'

The sobs spilled out of Katara and she tentatively took her hand from her face, sniffling and opening her eyes to drink down all the colours of everything she had been deprived of. It was night, so everything was still mostly dark, still lost in hues of blue, grey and black. And then Zuko gently brought a palm round to her side and Katara felt heat touch her face, the small flames catching hold of the air above, floating like a tiny lantern above Zuko's lifelines.

'It's like...a little heart-beat,' she sobbed out, and was bewildered to see Zuko smile so sadly, as though her words had brought an unpleasant memory to life. But the hand that wasn't holding the flame bent round her shoulder all the same, concern and comfort in the touch, and Katara felt a sob roll right through at the way she could now _see_ such a thing mirrored on his face.

'It's okay,' he said, reading her correctly, 'it's all still here. Everything's still the way you left it.'

Katara blinked up at him. She felt hot and heavy and intensely guilty. Because Aang would have offered her the same comfort in a heartbeat, given her the gift of similar words and the world besides; and yet she felt glad, stupidly glad, that it was _Zuko_ here, ready and willing to drop his stunted, unsure words down into her ear.

Crying silently, she lunged forward and wrapped her arms around him, jolting the flames hovering above his hand. The brown-red rust of his robes immediately swept into her sight, but she sniffled and lifted her head a little, just enough to surface above his chest. And she saw how the small circle of light his flame threw out helped transform the navy grass into a rich green, a small lily-pad in the dark, for them to sit on and be together.

And so that was precisely what they did.

* * *

It didn't last.

Katara's sobs grew, first collected noise, and then rapidly spewed out mucus, which she thoroughly smeared into Zuko's robes. He didn't say anything; simply hugged her back, tighter than she could first manage to squeeze him.

But eventually, _eventually_ , she felt relief, the breath being pushed and pulled out of her mouth and nose, two parts of her face she had missed, long enough for her to not fear choking. What Koh had done to her had been a profound torture.

'Zuko?' she asked timidly, rising her slightly reddened face to meet his gaze.

'Um...yes?' he replied in turn, his eyes trying to hold her own, but eventually slipping and sliding to the side.

They both knew why.

'Should we...'

They stared at each other and the word 'talk' died on Katara's tongue.

'Your mother and her husband...' she managed and his eyes widened.

'Katara,' he breathed, hope springing into his expression, and for a moment he so physically resembled Aang, her happy optimistic Aang, that it hurt. 'You're amazing.'

He gave her one last squeeze and then dragged her to her feet.

And then they were off, hands tightly clenched within each other's, Zuko towing Katara as though she were an unsteady foal. It was almost as though they didn't care what any passing people would think, thoughts of both Ursa and Item infecting their heads instead. Katara couldn't help but let her eyes dart from side to side, feeling dizzy by the warm light in the corridors that bustled into her sight and flooded her brain with the rich red colour of everything around her. Once she had thought she had hated it, that red, pure Fire Nation red. Now it was hard to tear her eyes away from, and she drank it all down greedily.

That same red covered the ground of the room they tumbled and tripped into, Ursa being the first point of focus they saw, her black hair a brushstroke against the candles burning by the bed. Ty Lee was leaning out of her chair, a basin of water in her hands, looking dreamily at Ursa and Ikem both; for Ursa was leaning to the side, covers wrapped round her waist like a fallen curtain as her fingertips reached out to fan across the laugh-lines on her fallen husband's face. And he let her, half-sitting up, before allowing his own hand to tilt her chin down towards his.

Katara and Zuko froze, panting, but the two adults didn't flee from each like teenagers would do. It was a very adult sort of courage that kept their hands in place, resting on each other's skin like they belonged there, and Katara, seeing it, felt a little jump in her heart. And a very small, quiet shame.

Ursa smiled, her expression tentative, lost, and still a little frightened, but her back straightened almost immediately, and her arm reached out for Zuko, all the same.

'Zuko,' she said, her tone as soft as moonlight falling from behind a cloud, and Zuko went, his hand dropping from Katara's.

'Mom,' he said. 'Mom! I'm so glad...'

And Katara, feeling like an intruder, grabbed a still-gawking Ty lee and pulled her into the corridor.

* * *

Silence, between them.

Then:

'Your aura's red,' Ty Lee informed her, balancing on her toes and swinging round so she could peer up into Katara's recovered face and neatly invade her personal space in one fey movement. 'It's been a little peaky since you've been here and awfully blue-green the last few days, but that's understandable, because of your missing face. Anyone would totally be freaked out about that!'

Katara carefully bit her tongue.

'But now...' Ty Lee trailed off and then gave her what she thought to be a sneaky look. Katara didn't appreciate it. 'Now you're centred. You've got brown trailing down through you like roots. That's what you are, rooted.' She paused, the coyness in her eyes slipping away to look a little melancholy. 'The complete opposite of the Avatar.'

Katara felt her breath catch.

'I know,' she said stiffly and turned away. Away from Ty Lee and towards Aang and her brother who were now running down the corridor, the fear and worry on their faces rapidly melting away at the sight of her own. The battle with Koh must have been noisy enough to wake them.

I know, she repeated softly to herself, away from any answering voices as she reached out and met Aang's arms with her own.

* * *

 **Notes:** DUN, DUN, DUN!


	6. To became strong enough, brave enough,

There was laughter, feasting, hugging, all arranged within the space of a half-hour. People were woken up, made to cry at the sight of Katara's face and then promptly wrap their arms around her. Though this time, Katara was glad to report, she didn't leave any trails of mucus behind on their clothing. Sokka would never have let her live it down otherwise.

Speaking of which...she smiled brightly at the sight of him stuffing his cheeks like a hamster-rat, nearly bending at the waist with the weight of food he balanced on his plate. Disgusting, yes. But not as disgusting as not having any eyes to view it with, she was finding. Looking up, he caught her eye and waved a roasted bird leg of some kind at her, speaking round the second one he had just slammed into his mouth.

'Dfuuuu yooouuu thu-'

'Sokka, that's disgusting,' she told him primly. 'Don't speak with your mouth full.'

But she still refilled his cup with a flick of her wrist, as soon as he bent over choking.

There was a delighted laugh, and Aang spun over to her side, as fey on his feet as Ty Lee.

'Here you go!' he told her, his face alight with pride as he whirled a small decorative lotus flower made of thinly-sliced onion and spiced grape up to her face with a tiny tornado. 'You deserve it! Wow, maybe you should take _my_ job of being the great bridge between the worlds!'

Katara accepted his offering with a smile, taking a delicate bite and letting the sharp taste of the black, almost citrus-like condiment inside flood her tongue with heat. Then she raised her eyes to his. It was strange. She had always thought herself more grown up than him, until the day he suddenly wasn't and then decided he wanted something grown –up with her. And for a while she had wanted it too. A part of her still did.

'You have to show me what you did,' Aang continued, looking at her with gentle awe. 'I had no idea waterbending could be used that way!'

'And what about Zuko?' Sokka broke in excitedly. 'Who knew he could muster up the same crazy lightening-throwing powers as his sister!'

Zuko shook his head, a bashful grin on his face. 'I just...it wasn't very powerful. Nothing like my sister's. I just knew I had to stay calm. And I was trying so hard, because I didn't want Koh to take my face as well, that I think some of that calm slipped down inside me.' He paused, his eyes brooding and thoughtful as they rested on his cup of coconut ale. 'There was something about the way I saw Katara practising her technique earlier; it made me feel calm just watching it.' He gave a sheepish smile. 'Or maybe I really am better at controlling my temper nowadays. Things haven't blown up in my face for quite a while.'

He very tactfully did not slide his eyes over to Katara as he said that. But she felt herself flush rosy and bright all the same, at the implication.

'You're not the only one who doesn't quite understand what they did,' she muttered. 'I...think I cleansed Koh. And whatever it was inside him, that darkness...without it he didn't seem hungry for faces anymore.'

'His mother did say it was their estrangement that caused him to start collecting faces in the first place,' Aang mused, swirling the egg-custard round his bowl thoughtfully.

Katara nodded and then was rudely interrupted from her thoughts, and the conversation, by Toph waving a papaya under her nose with a broad grin. Katara scowled, reached down, and drained some of the juice out from beneath the skin, flicking her fingers forward, so that the force of the liquid ruptured the skin and squirted Toph in the eye. And then quickly, before Toph could retaliate, she leant down and took a bite of the papaya even though she hated it. Her stomach had not stopped growling for hours, and given what she knew she would now have to do, she didn't want to take anything for granted, ever again.

The next second she choked, stumbling forward as a small force slammed up against the balls of her feet. Something wet met her face with a loud slap of noise, and a scent, deathly sweet, filled her nose and mouth. Katara blinked, pulled strands of soggy hair away from her cheeks, and stumbled back from a world of sickly yellow before meeting Aang's gobsmacked look. He was nursing what remained of his egg-custard, the imprint of Katara's face creating mountains that clambered up the side of the bowl, with each slope resembling the crescent-like shape of a wave about to fall in on itself.

Toph didn't even bother to hide her grin.

Katara rolled her eyes, not even bothering to glance down at the tiny stumps of rock that had sent her flying forwards; Toph would have already slid them out of sight. Instead she whirled her arm over her head, without even looking behind her, and instantly the water in the nearby jug rose up to splatter Toph in the face.

'Figured you might need it to rinse out the juice in your eye,' Katara told her faux-sweetly.

Toph growled. The ground didn't so much as tremble as she strode up to Katara. But the atmosphere, and a few of the wiser courtiers nearby did.

There was a small smack, of skin meeting skin, instead of the expected rock pounding into flesh, and Toph's fist left Katara's arm at remarkable speed. 'Good to have you back, sweetness.'

'Ow,' said Katara hollowly, rubbing the spot she had been punched.

Zuko offered her a look of sympathy.

Then Toph's face bloomed into a frightening, expected grin. 'Still gonna get you back though. My revenge will be sweet and unexpected.'

Katara didn't doubt it. She met Aang's eyes and saw him give her a playful shrug, his own grin almost as wide as Toph's.

'Sorry about your hair.'

'It'll wash out,' she said softly. Unlike, she knew, the hurt she would be leaving him with in about eight hours time.

* * *

In the morning Katara and Ursa strode up to two different men within two different rooms inside the palace. The tapestries flared a bright red in the corners of their vision and they couldn't help letting their eyes drift over and away from the hurt they knew they would cause to appear on the faces in front of them.

'Aang,' said one woman.

'Zuko, my love,' said another.

'I need a break,' they both stated.

* * *

Ursa packed with steady hands, barely making time to brush her daughter's hair. Everything was dark by the mirror, combs and perfumes, scattered across the counter beneath as Ursa kept the curtains half-closed, eager to prevent the sun stealing in and highlighting the grand, dragon-adorned frame.

'Mommy?' Kiyi asked beside her, eyes wide and curious. There was none of that empty, fake-concern that had plagued Azula's eight year old expression, whenever she had asked her mother to let her play with Zuko. 'Why are we leaving? I was learning some really cool stuff!'

'Your big brother will be coming with us,' Ikem assured her, reaching down to sweep her up into the air and lift her high above his head. He didn't have the impressive muscles that Zuko's body boasted of, but his arms were still strong and steady, made firm by his day-to-day labour. And they could still make Kiyi squeal with surprised glee in a way no motion from Zuko that caused fire to spill and dance, could yank out from her. 'He's the Fire Lord; no one can tell him not to spend time teaching his little sister.'

'But not for too long,' Ursa cautioned. 'He has important things to do here. Things he will need to get back to.'

Kiyi wrapped her arms round her father's neck and sent small pulses of heat along her skin, smoothing over the knob of bone on his back with a small touch of her self-heating palm.

Ikem stiffened. 'Where...' he said slowly, a rush of pleasure filling his voice as he relaxed. 'My, that's lovely!...When did Zuko teach you this?'

Kiyi shrugged carefully, so as not to dislodge her hand from his skin.

'Katara asked him if firebenders could keep themselves constantly warm against the conditions of the South and North Pole and he said, no; we're not like airbenders who can keep the temperature of the air around them the same, all the time. It takes work. Then he told her about how he melted his way through some solid ice using his palms and so I butted in and told him to teach me!'

Ursa bent down to refold a robe, hiding her smile in the shadow of her bag.

'You mustn't be so rude; it's not nice to interrupt conversations like that.'

Kiyi made a face. 'I don't have a choice! When he gets all wordy with Katara it's like everyone else disappears for him, and you have to be rude, otherwise he won't listen! I don't get why; Sokka's much funnier.' She stopped to sniff. 'Katara's nice, I guess. But she's not that interesting.'

Ursa's smile grew larger. 'I rather think that's up to your brother to decide,' she said firmly and laughed, listening to Kiyi's grumbles all the while.

* * *

Katara barely glanced at the things she threw into her bag, her fingers catching on the fur-lined edges and tearing away. Seaweed lotion, a few spare robes, beads for her loopies, though she hadn't worn them in the typical Southern style for quite a while... it all went in, methodically ticked off within her head. She was glad she wasn't rooming with Sokka; all her stuff would have been misplaced by now, lost underneath maps and badly-plotted diagrams.

On the other hand...there was now nothing much to prevent her from meeting Aang's mournful stare from across the room. His gray eyes were boring into hers, so much like a turtle seal pup's, that it hurt.

'Are you sure?' he asked. His voice was small, kid-like, but his stance was wide and filled up the chair he was sat in. A mere four months ago, he would have crawled up into himself, a wounded crab-snail, arms crossed over the knees he would bring up to bury his chest against. Now he was facing her with his body language open, trying to understand.

She sighed.

'I just...you've always been sure of your feelings for me. And you made certain I'm sure of them too, every day! You're never wavered, never given me any reason to doubt you. And you deserve the same courtesy from me.' She paused, hands smoothing out the rumpled robe before her, before they moved to pick out the tangled strands of hair woven and fastened in between the spokes of her comb. 'Like I said: I need a break. You haven't done anything wrong. In fact, you've done everything **right**. Me, though? I need to _start_ doing things right. And that's what this break is about.'

Aang watched her carefully, his gaze heavy and still. It unnerved Katara, sent her hands spiralling out of control to constantly fiddle with things she had already pushed down into the recesses of her bag.

'Do you want us to see other people?' he asked. His voice was grave, no hint of the heart-break Katara knew he must be fighting against.

She paused. The flippant 'if you like' was on the tip of her tongue. But that would be taking the easy way out. So she stilled her hands, raised her face properly to meet his gaze and said, 'yes,' firmly, no room in her voice for doubt.

Aang sucked in a gasp, a fragile, choked sound, the firmness in his gaze utterly shattered. He quickly swung his head away, his hand clutching his staff in a grip that turned his knuckles the colour of snow. Katara's heart ached for him and she very nearly changed her mind right there and then, almost emptied her bag where she stood. Instead she spun, whirling the strap over her shoulder.

Light was spilling in from the window, marking out the rug she had to tread over in a firm stroke of scarlet. Her path to the door, and in was dyed in a hue only a little lighter than blood.

How fitting, she thought.

In three steps she had crossed it, her hands touching the door as though it was the only thing left rooting her to this room, to this relationship.

'Goodbye, Aang,' she said softly. And pretended it didn't hurt when he was unable to offer her the same words in return.

* * *

She didn't tell Sokka or Toph. Not a word dropped from her lips to Suki either. Instead she went straight to Zuko, to his room. She nodded to the guards perched outside and waited, until they checked inside and gave her permission to enter.

And inside was...chaos.

'Whoa,' Katara said, her tongue feeling too big for her mouth. 'What happened? '

Zuko looked up at her, with what looked to be the entirety of his wardrobe draped over his head and shoulders, red cloth cascading over his limbs as though they were multiple shawls. It was cute, she thought, like a kid playing in a grown-up clothes. She had to stifle her laughter, force it down with a hand pressed firmly to her lips.

Zuko sighed, raising his hands to the ceiling. 'I just...opened the doors and _everything_ fell out on me! I don't know what the servants were thinking, piling everything up like this.'

Katara arched a brow. 'How about you fold up and put away your own clothes for once? I know you're capable of doing it. You and Aang were the only ones who tried, back when you were travelling with us.'

Zuko cast her a mournful look. 'I've tried! But everyone here gets really upset when I do simple stuff like that, you would not believe it!'

'What's all the panic about anyway?' Katara asked, shaking her head as she bent down to pick up the nearest item of clothing. She started to fold it briskly in neat lines, using her lap to turn and prop the shortening squares of material against, as her fingers moved and moulded the fabric into place. 'Are you planning on going anywhere?'

Zuko dropped his head and nodded, the motion sending Katara's stomach plummeting.

'Oh,' she said quietly. 'That's...too bad. I was hoping I could stay here a little while longer.'

Something in the tone of her voice must have struck him, wistful and unsure as it was, because his head snapped up, his eyes glancing over her keenly. 'What happened?' he asked.

Katara sighed. Gathered up all her courage and stared him straight in the face. 'I...Aang and I are taking a break.'

Zuko suddenly went very, very still.

Katara swallowed. 'I think...it's not your fault!' she said hurriedly. 'I think this was something I always needed to do. But now it's actually happened sooo...'

She couldn't fold the robe down into another smaller square, so she carefully tossed it onto Zuko's bed, pleased when it remained reasonably flat and refused to let gravity launch any new creases along its surface. 'I just wanted to move to another room, one completely free of any recent memories. And just think about what I should do next. That's all.'

The two of them stared quietly at each other, Katara nervously fiddling with her hair, long waves of it becoming wrapped round and round her finger as she twisted it into tighter and tighter knots. She felt stupid and exposed, very much not the person she wanted Zuko to see her as.

Then, as though to thoroughly ruin the moment, the cloth perched on Zuko hair shifted and fell, falling like a veil across his face. Katara snorted, her aborted laugh stirring Zuko into action as he whipped the offending material off his head.

'I'm going to Ember Island,' he said shortly. 'It seems you're not the only one who wants a break. My mother doesn't want to be here either; I'm sure you don't need to imagine why.'

Katara sobered instantly.

'But,' Zuko added, softer, more hesitantly, like he was afraid of startling an eagle-cat away. 'If you'd like, you can come with us. Ember Island has a way of...smoothing things out. It's a good place to go to clear your head.'

They stared at each other again and Katara remembered his touch against her black-clad shoulder after she had walked away from Yoh Rha months ago, his tug on Appa's reins and his voice gently saying, 'you're not ready to go back to the others yet; and you shouldn't have to. I know somewhere you can go to just be alone for a while.' He had kept his promise then, gifted her with a solid few hours of his family's holiday home. And he was making the same offer now. Only...

'Alright,' she said, her voice equally as soft. 'Yes. I'll go.'

This time, she wouldn't be left alone.


	7. To take my heart from the shelf

It was a quiet night in the Fire Nation, the hum of the cricket-cicadas disrupting the atmosphere that the evening inevitably drew her into. Katara couldn't help but cock her head at the odd chirp, at the break in the rhythm as one of those brown lumps used their strong legs to launch themselves from under the wood paneling near her knees. When this had first happened, last spring, she had jumped and Toph had laughed at her. But Aang had smiled and held one out to her with a hand, the insect's legs sticking out at odd angles over his palm.

'Sorry Aang,' she had said. 'But it's not nearly as cute as the hermit rats. Not a fan.'

'That's a shame,' he had replied. 'They're great musicians.'

But even now, she hadn't been able to shake off her first impression of them; the long, round ridges of their brown shells, contrasted by the sharp triangular arch of their legs just struck her as _creepy_. Though it was still a little galling to admit. She had never been one to flinch at the sight of bugs, after all. The South Pole, like anywhere else, was home to its own assortment of creepy crawlies, butterfly-moths that danced round the flames and were accompanied by the common buzz of gopher-flies that hovered over and around their food, even the meat they kept tightly sealed in pots.

Katara remembered raising droplets with her hands on one such occasion, dragging out moisture from the snow with her stubby eight-year-old fingers and thrusting them out to sprinkle their wings with moisture. Sokka had called her the most ineffective fly-swatter ever.

'It's a little crueler than that,' her mother had admitted, her calm voice cutting over them both. She had been busy leaning over the shadows to the side of their home, her deft fingers, already so much more coordinated than Katara's own, wrapped round the knife that was busy slicing off the fat from the strips of turtle-seal their father had carved out from the carcass earlier that morning. 'Drench their wings and they'll never fly again. They'll just freeze and drop off in this temperature.' She had paused and offered a smile over her shoulder, to show that she was more wryly disappointed than mad. 'It's why they don't fly out in mist. Come here, Sweetie.'

Katara had stepped out towards the only part of their home that wasn't blue or white or brown; towards the small slabs of meat that stabbed at her eyes with their sleek redness, burning like jewels.

'Your Grandmother has told you stories of the waterbenders that used to live here. Did she tell you they could create mist with their breath?'

Katara nodded.

'Why don't you give it a try?'

Her mother had stepped behind her, dropping the knife she was holding to crowd Katara's smaller figure with the larger space of her own. Her hands fell to grasp Katara's and then brought them up as though to usher them over her daughter's mouth, to successfully seal up her speech. But Kya made them stop short, centimetres away, hovering as though to trap the short puffs of breath that decorated their sides with warmth.

'I don't know what it feels like to move water,' Kya had said gently. 'But I know that you use your hands. Breathe out and ...push. The way you do when you try to freeze the water Sokka uses to wash his face in the mornings. Yes,' she adds, upon seeing the guilt in Katara's expression. 'I've seen you try.'

From his place on the rug, with the bulky wooden animals he was making crash into each other, Sokka snorted.

Katara frowned. Concentrated. And shakily, thin vapours of white rose from her mouth. Her fingers trembled slightly with the strain but her mother held them steady. And true to her word, the insects stopped hovering over the meat she had had to shield with her arms.

'See?' Kya had said softly. 'Much better than being a fly-swatter.'

Though that hadn't prevented Yon Rha from swatting her like a bug six weeks later, nor did it stop him from brushing aside Katara's presence as though she were nothing more than a pest he had to drive away from his catch of the day. Katara hadn't even tried to raise her hands against him.

Of course, looking back with a mind that could now do more than heave together inexperienced snowballs, Katara knew that she probably would have died had she tried. Kya knew it too. It was why she had attempted to bargain with Yon Rha in the first place.

Still. Maybe she could have done something. Made him slip in a patch of ice, or even temporally blinded him with a spray of water. It might have been enough to make Kya rise up from her crouched position on the floor and given them both enough time to race out into the snow.

'Katara.' It's Zuko voice, and it broke into her thoughts, made soft with concern. Funny, how a mere few years ago she could never have imagined such a thing creeping into his tone. 'Why don't you come inside?' he continued, tone still soft and present.

She stared at him at the way he seemed to fidget, his glance sweeping down and away. He was more like Sokka than she had ever thought possible. Then he seemed to sigh and straighten, his gaze swinging round into the sea.

Katara frowned, following his eyes to see a glimmering gold spread across the water, a faint haze of a thousand candle flames thrown down to play against the cove.

'The current's brought them to this side of the island,' Zuko said, his tone carefully neutral. 'It sweeps around the rocks from the town, before drifting off into the ocean.'

Katara blinked, the tiny specks of light dancing like miniature spirits as though to taunt her sight with its lack of focus. She stepped forward, boots landing on water that trembled and refused to give way.

'Katara...'

'I'm going to take a look,' she replied.

Zuko's sigh was a loud thing in the night, but he stepped forward and for a moment Katara could feel the weight and heat of him press in on her, crowding her shape with the slightly larger cut of his own. But unlike her mother years ago, he didn't reach out to touch her.

'I'll come with you,' he said. Then like an afterthought, he added: 'please.'

Katara smiled at that, at the fact that this word dropped from him so easily now. It was as though it had risen up in place of the similar-sounding 'peasant' he had used to sneer at her.

'Alright,' she said, raising her hands to make the water bunch up and shine white beneath the night. The raft of ice slid up to her shoes like an obedient ostrich-horse. 'Hop on. And pray you don't do anything to make me shove you off.'

* * *

Up close, the candles were a lot less glamorous, some of them tiny stubs of red wax that were barely flickering. Their light flared weakly above the waves, flickering dangerously when a particularly turbulent shove of water pushed up beneath them, to make their light sputter and jump.

All of them were balancing on a variety of implements. Some were wedged inside thin saucers, of a material light enough to balance on the waves. A few were surrounded by the crinkle of paper, makeshift lanterns that billowed and pushed, the weight of air holding them fast against sinking, like a miniature war-balloon Sokka could craft. And others were simply tied onto and over tiny planks of woods, the knots in the rope reminiscent of the ones her dad taught Sokka and her to use when they were out in a boat.

Either way, as fragile as they are, they did not stop weaving gold against the water, or dipping light into the crinkle of ripples the black water played out beneath them.

'It's beautiful,' Katara said.

'It's more impressive out near the capital,' Zuko said. His hands are clenched within his lap, his legs sloping out over the ice so that his knees bend out into the water. 'The people can afford to pay artisans to craft proper candle-holders out there. Ones with symbols of important families, or even simple flowers. But the people are poorer here.'

Katara's head whipped round, a frown on her face as her mouth dropped open to rebuke him. But the words stayed on her tongue, hovered there and refused to creep out as she saw Zuko stare out wistfully at the lights.

'You're right though. This is pretty.'

'Actually,' Katara said tartly, 'I said 'beautiful.''

It was a very important distinction to make. Especially when it caused Zuko to scowl.

'Yes, well...seeing the individual effort the people here put in... I think it's _pretty_ great.'

Now it was Katara's turn to scowl as he grinned back at her. Only for it to die off a few seconds later.

'Katara...do you know what today is?'

Katara frowned, turning away to gaze out at the sea of gold in front of her. It painted yellow shadows over the ice beneath her, made the blue of her dress slope out into a lighter shade than the navy the rest of the night was determined to throw it under. They were temporary things, small effects and colours that were destined to die and change.

'It's the day of the dead,' she said softly. 'Your mother told me.'

She felt Zuko flinch behind her. She couldn't blame him. His mother was still so lost, trapped between the two lives of the two different people she had lived as: Ursa, dutiful mother and assassin of a Firelord, and Ursa: a woman with no past and a new face, whose only joy was the pleasant hum of a peasant existence with her new husband and daughter.

She had trod through the corridors of the holiday home of her old family, the one she had forgotten, so many times, a look of faint consternation on her face. And every time, she stiffened at the sight of her face in mirrors, or above the pools of water she formed in the dishes she cleaned. Twice now, Katara had had to reach out and take them from her, to rinse away the dregs of food still caught under her fingers.

Zuko swallowed.

'There isn't something like this, back home,' Katara said lightly. 'We have the solstice, where it's said the spirits used to dance in the sky and paint it colours. But I've never seen it. And...I used to try and recreate my mother's face in the snow each year. It was a mess every time.'

Out of habit, her fingers reached up and danced for the blue bead that hung from her mother's necklace, dragging it down beneath their tips.

'It was one of the few water-bending tricks I tried where Sokka wouldn't smirk at me when I failed.'

Zuko glanced at her from the corner of his eyes. She could feel it more than see it.

'Have you tried again, since you became a waterbending master?'

Katara paused. 'No, I haven't.'

 _There's no snow here_ , she thought, but didn't say. _And the ice I form here breaks too quickly, melts more rapidly than it does at home. I would do my mother a disservice, to try and recreate her in the homeland of the person that took her from me._

And now it was Zuko's fingers that reached out to form a sliding dance as they touched upon her own, a faint tinge of flame-stroked skin nestling into her palm. His knuckles caught and dragged, scraping against her thumb as his fingers curled round into her hand. It was a lover's grasp and Katara allowed it. Mostly because he was silent for a moment, mulling over her words, refusing to say anything stupid, like 'I understand' or asking a more pressing 'why?'

Instead he asked her how much longer she wanted to stay.

'Until they burn out or drown,' she replied. 'All these candles: I want to see them leave me behind. I'll keep watching until then.'

And so they did. Even if Katara had to reform their melting ice raft at least two more times.

* * *

'I don't want to live in the palace,' Ursa said, staring out the window. The kitchen was wide and filled with brown clay pots she had brought from the market, one she had received by bypassing all the brighter colours with her distant eyes. The other ones in there, the sharp, red rimmed ones with fine-leafed gold dragons, she had hidden in cupboards, their doors bulging as though to hold back a treasure hoard. 'I just need to rest my eyes,' she had explained, when they asked her about it. 'I need...I just want to let them settle.'

Katara couldn't help but watch her now, the way the other woman's fingers traced the etchings in the nearest clay vase; no dragons, not in that design, merely a simple turtle-duck.

'I do not belong in the palace.' Ursa said softly. 'Perhaps one day I will again. But as I am now, I can't.' She raised her eyes to them both. 'Not until I speak to Azula again.'

Zuko stiffened, like he was trying to fight back all the numerous complaints he had inside him at _that_ idea and Ursa laughed. It was small, warm noise and Katara smiled to hear it, turning her head to watch another smile bloom outside; Kiyi was out on the veranda and seeing the girl's face flush with joy through the open door as she made fire flare out from her fingers made Katara remember what she had talked to her about earlier. She had asked her if she would be interested in meeting two waterbending students of hers in the South Pole one day, feeling this determination grow within, that Suru and Siki wouldn't grow up with the same fear she did. She didn't want them to cower whenever they saw someone dressed in red walk towards them, and perhaps seeing someone their own age practising with fire the same way they did with water might help with that.

'It won't be easy,' said Ursa suddenly, her gaze drifting to the daughter, she hadn't lost. Her face was wedged in shadow as she spoke, making it difficult to read the expression on her face. 'But as much as I don't understand Azula, I remember this; that she was happy here on Ember Island when she was little. So that's where I'm going to live. It's where she'll know where to find me. She's always been clever like that.'

Then she turned a wistful look at her son. 'But did you have to burn so many of our old items?'

Zuko winced in guilt and Katara held back a smile. Ursa's eyes darted towards her. And then she smiled, slow and beautiful and even with the lines on her face, showcasing the slight wrinkles Katara wished Kya would have had time to develop in life, there was still an outstanding grace to her features, and a wry sort of peace.

'Oh well,' Ursa said. 'I'm glad to see you've managed to lose some of that restlessness you used to have.'

Zuko frowned. 'Restlessness? Mom, every kid in the world is restless. Besides, if you think I was bad, you haven't seen the Avatar consume a sugar cube.'

'Oh, I saw,' Ursa said, eyes twinkling as she tapped the beak of the turtle duck on the clay in front of her; and Katara suppressed a groan. Because that's right: she _had._ 'And I have to say,' Ursa continued, ' I had no idea anyone could talk that fast while racing across the ceiling upside down; it was terribly charming in an odd sort of way.' Then she sobered. 'Still; he seemed to have found peace with himself in a way I haven't seen with many other people in this nation.'

'And is that what you want for Azula?' Zuko asked, now with a very tame sort of softness to his voice, the very same he used whenever he felt apologetic. And Katara tossed him a sharp look for it. 'Peace?'

Zuko's tone, Katara knew, was meant to disarm his mother, but instead it made her stiffen, her shoulders bracing as though ready for a punch. 'I want the same thing for all my children,' she told them quietly. 'For them to be happy. And while I have always understood you, I am not sure if Azula had always understood me.'

There was an awkwardness then and after a few minutes, Katara eventually found herself alone in the kitchen. Kiyi had quickly come racing in to tug at Zuko's hand and demand another firebending lesson, which prompted Ursa to busy herself with yet another restless patrol round the gardens she had not tended to for years. They were slowly coming to life under her fingers now, thanks to the efforts of her husband; Ikem frequently came back with new cuttings from saplings he found outside the gates, along with small, gentle flowers clutched beneath his fingers and held against the snap-able bark that he got from the market. Quiet, petite, white and purple things that Katara was sure Ozai would never have approved of. So she and Ursa of course, naturally loved them.

But what did Azula love? Certainly not flowers. Though truthfully Katara had never really given much thought to the question, other than arriving at the obvious conclusion of 'blue fire', 'destruction' and the 'same things as Ozai: hurting people.' Now, she wondered if that had been a simplification.

Perhaps the answer wasn't up to her to find out though. There were, she knew, other people and other answers about the things they loved, that she needed to be more concerned about with right then. And in typical Katara fashion, she resolved to make a start.

* * *

'What about Mai?' Katara needled Zuko with, no less than two hours later, when the sun spread over the sea to infect the dock her feet hung over. The wood turned crisp and orange at its touch, swirling oak lines fanning out under the lifelines in her hands she swept them across, and she smiled sweetly at Zuko, as though her question were truly an innocent thought. 'Where is she? And what...what happened with her?'

Zuko gave her a startled look, a look Katara took pride in producing. Then it softened, trailing off into thoughtfulness.

'I wasn't good for her,' he said slowly. 'I was too much of an angry jerk. I thought I'd gotten a little better about it when I was with her; but I think my crush on you made me cling to her a little too hard. I wanted it to go away, so I thought pushing Mai into a priority would do that. In the end she was better for me than I was for her and we both knew it. So she left. And will probably do far better consorting with my politicians than I ever will. They find it hard to lie to her because no one can outlast her poker face. '

Then he shot another side-long look at her. 'And what about you? What about Aang?'

Katara dragged some of her hair round her finger. And felt a little ugly as she said; 'I love Aang. I do. But I need to love myself more. And the way I feel about him is... _different_ to the way I feel about you. I won't lie, Zuko. I did care about him the way I would care about a boyfriend and I think we could have been happy together, in the way you hear about in all the great love stories.' She blew out a frustrated breath. 'But I think I've been letting that blind me. And my Dad seems to think love shouldn't do that.' She looked at Zuko and then gently bashed her head against his shoulder. 'I don't know whether my eyes are open with you. My vision can get narrower with you around, I know, angrier even. I'm a darker person when I'm with you. But you always wait until I'm at peace again and I like that.'

 _And so did Aang,_ she thought traitorously, but squashed it down hard as Zuko gave her a rather dorky smile.

'I'm glad,' he said. Then hesitated. 'I want to kiss you, if that's alright?'

Katara smiled. 'That would be fine,' she said.

And leaned forward, to try and be a true adult with him, in the way she had always wanted to be.

* * *

 **Notes:** Katara's bond with her mother, and her deep, deep attachment to what she represented to her, (safety, bravery, and a time when she could simply be a child, instead of a maternal figure and a miniature adult) are all incredibly important to me.


	8. Call out my past's bluff,

In her dreams, three nights later, Ursa didn't run. She wasn't chased. She walked, and cool blue water lapped at her feet, working its way between her toes, much in the same way Katara's hands could work magic over her skin with just a glow. Ursa had been benefiting from a few such sessions with Katara recently, sighing as water weaved its way over her muscles and made her marvel at its soothing touch. Waterbending was a lot more relaxing to be around than firebending she found, especially after years of fearing what Ozai could do to her with it.

So now Ursa walked through her dream, with little fear in her step. And saw a gold creature emerge from the pool she rode through. A dragon, with it's coils shifting and shaking, as though to rid it's self of the icy temperature it had been born from. Droplets of moisture rebounded from its shaking legs but failed to touch Ursa. Instead she stared at the dragon and felt her breath catch at her. The eyes in the dragon were also gold, gold like Ozai's, like her own. Like...

'You fear me,' the dragon spat, 'you've always feared me.'

'Yes,' said Ursa calmly. 'I always have.'

And then she woke, blistering heat causing her skin to sweat and shrivel, tears blinding her as she turned her head to breathe, to keep the fire robbing her of oxygen. The blue fire that was dancing in front of her eyes.

Ursa narrowed these eyes against the eerie light. And saw Azula stand above her with the source of said light in her hands, in that very same soothing blue colour she saw caught around Katara's own fingers yesterday. Instinctively, some emotion in her heart calling her to look, she glanced down at the floor and saw a shadow in the shape of her husband, sprawled over the floor.

'Azula!' the shriek came out her, loud and fierce, fear in every syllable. But also with a hefty amount of rage.

Azula smirked. 'Your husband _plays_ with weapons, he doesn't fight with them,' she stated confidently. 'How else would you explain a full grown man losing to a teenage girl?'

'A teenage girl with fire in her hands,' Ursa pointed out coolly. She gathered up every lesson of impassivity she had learnt as lady married to a second-born prince and applied it to her face. 'Besides: you've never been a girl, just as your brother has never been a boy. Not really. Your father never allowed you to simply be children.'

'And I'm so _grateful_ for it,' Azula bit out, teeth snapping at every word; Ursa could sees small sparks flying out instead of spit as her teeth clashed together, ugly, like a snarling dog. Then suddenly Azula calmed, tilting her head to the side like a small, curious bird. 'Go on,' she said, her voice curdling into a taunt, a child's sing-song. 'Call me a monster. I know you want to. Look what I did to your husband after all!' She splayed her hand out dramatically, as though to brandish Ikem's body as some new piece of artwork. _Here, Mom_ , the gesture said in full, _look what I did_.

Ursa wisely refrained from pointing out that Ikem still breathed, the shallow rise and fall of his chest barely audible against the wood. Just the slightest of shifts and creasing in his clothing gave it all away.

'A monster?' Ursa murmured, pointedly letting her tone drift into a questioning one. 'Oh no, Azula, love. Not all monsters are snarling, ugly things. They can be beautiful dragons too.' She braved the trembling of Azula's lip, and the steel in her eyes, steel that could melt and let fury dictate the fall and burn of blue flames against her skin at any second. 'That's what you've always been. A dragon. Though you may never wear the title like your uncle.' Then she leaned forward conspiringly, as close as she dared, heat pasting the side of her face and threatening to leave her with a scar much like Zuko's. 'There are plenty who consider him a monster too, you know.'

Her hand shifted, made to move round the flame to touch Azula at the wrist; but like a snake, Azula snapped it back and the blue light winked out. Ursa blinked rapidly at the darkness that flooded her sight and left her hand floundering through the space where she was sure her daughter should be.

Azula's voice steadily cut through the new distance between them, now positioned from what Ursa believed to be the window.

'Make sure Zuko teaches Kiyi everything he can. He's not nearly as hopeless a firebender as he used to be. And make sure you don't fail her, Mother; there's only room for one dragon in this family.' Then a sharp laugh fled out, and made the room, it's atmosphere, and Ursa's spine rattle. 'I wonder; if I held a flame up against father's face, would he still try to touch me, the way you did? What do you think, Mother? You both hatched a dragon, after all.'

Ursa paused, pondering over the question as though it was truly important. Maybe it was. To Azula, at any rate. 'I think,' she said carefully. 'That he would think you a monster. But only because he has only ever seen other people as either monster or prey. Nothing in between.'

There was silence. And Ursa felt the atmosphere re-warm itself, felt it thrum and crackle into something more peaceful. Azula, she realised, was gone. Her lost daughter, now lost once more.

'Mom?'

Kiyi shuffled and snorted, letting out a sleepy yawn as Ursa's robes pooled round the ankles she hastily dropped out of bed, all so she could keel at her husband's side. No burns marred his face and only a few bruises were unveiled to her hands, enough for Ursa to feel herself breathe a sigh of relief at the sight. It was nothing a little waterbending couldn't fix.

She turned to meet the sleepy gaze of her second daughter, the one she hadn't lost yet. The one she wouldn't fail.

'Go to sleep, little dragon,' she said softly. 'You need to go out roaring with your brother, tomorrow.'

Perhaps it was time she braved the flames of their firebending lessons and watched them for herself, all the way through to the end. And learnt to feel comfort from the sight of orange, instead of blue.

* * *

In the morning, Katara cupped her hands inside the water Zuko had gathered within an old coco-bean shell, and then raised them through the golden glow of the kitchen towards Ikem. Kiyi watched solemnly as they bridged the purple space between his cheek and his jaw, Katara's fingers mapping out the small, dun black bruise that littered his hair line. It looked as though an elbow had slammed into him, hard and fast, quick enough to send him straight to sleep.

A year ago, Katara wouldn't have been able to accurately predict what sort of body part could cause such injures to blossom, or have been able to tell, by their shape and formation, just how much force had been applied against the flesh. But then, her healing was not something that resulted or relied on sight alone. Feeling for chi, sensing the strokes of flow and movement that decided the life-force of those she healed, could tell her a lot. This felt as though the end of a pole had been rammed into the thin currents that now darted beneath the sore spots Katara now touched, like fish fleeing from the net. If it had been a fist that glanced across Ikem's face, it would have felt thicker, producing a thump to her senses, like someone wedging a heavy boot within a puddle.

His assailant had favoured speed and precision, over brute force. The implication of that made her blood run cold.

Zuko meanwhile, for once in his life, was actively glowering at his mother.

'I was an idiot.' He spoke thickly, the words shoved out from between a tense set of jawbones. 'A fool. I let myself believe that we had time, that Azula wouldn't even _think_ of coming here, that she'd be too wrapped up in her next messed-up scheme to pay attention to anything outside the capital or palace.' He laughed and ran a hand through his hair. 'I was complacent. What if she'd slipped in here with any of her followers?'

'But she didn't.' Now it was Ursa's turn to speak. And though she no longer wore the long, loose, hooded sleeves of a traditional Fire Lady, she still held her hands together as though she did, her fingers arched together in perfect formation. As though she was praying.

And well might she should, Katara thought grimly. The only thing that really surprised her about Azula paying them a visit, was that she, the waterbending peasant, hadn't woken up on fire. Or else been found dead the next morning, charred to a crisp, by lightening Zuko would not have been there to save her from.

Zuko gave his mother a tired look. 'That doesn't mean anything. Or maybe it does; but we won't understand it. She doesn't think like us, Mom. She never has. ' He paused and then his face gave an unpleasant twist. 'She doesn't even think like Dad. At least, not totally.'

Ikem snorted, then winced, at both the jolt of pain the movement gave him, and the cross look Katara fired off at him under her brows. 'Nobody human could think like your Father.'

Ursa pursed her lips. 'That's enough of that talk,' she said firmly, a bite of impudence in her tone. 'Azula will never be what any of us wish she could be. But I don't think she will be what Ozai wished her to be either. And I choose to draw a fair bit of satisfaction from that.'

And looking at her then, seeing both the fierce flare of passion in the other woman's eyes and her unbridled joy in what she was saying, Katara though she saw a jagged glimpse of a maniacal Azula in her expression. But no, that was wrong, wasn't it? Ursa had been here first in the world, and Azula had followed afterwards, created by her. Still, the resemblance in that moment was uncanny.

Perhaps Zuko had also seen it, because he drew up a little straighter, a new wariness in his eyes.

'She's dangerous,' he said softly. 'And I don't feel that any of us are safe here, if she's around. This trip ends tonight.'

He swept out of the room with the finality of the grand ruler he was still learning to be, even though his shoulders were free of the robe that would hang from it at traditional ceremonies and political meetings, to help offer a majestic swish at each entrance and exit. Still, Katara felt something _leave_ the room then, giving it an even more sombre quality as his footsteps faded from her ears. Listlessly, she let her hands fall to her lap.

'I can make some pieces of crushed ice for you, every half-hour,' she offered to Ikem. 'It won't make the swelling go down any further, but in this heat, it will help provide some relief.'

He smiled at her. 'Never has the phrase, 'she has healing hands,' ever been so adept.'

Katara mustered up a wry grin. 'I take it that's not a saying based on any kind of waterbending?'

'No.' Ursa spoke again, and this time her voice had a far-away quality to it, her eyes staring out the window once more. Katara wondered if she was half-hoping to see the shape of Azula out there. 'I heard a tale once, from my Father, that certain firebending could inspire a spiritual sort of cleaning by performing it over the body, even managing to awaken people who fell into comas; but such methods have been driven out the last century, and if they still exist, they've been kept well hidden'

Katara paused to marvel at that. She had never, not once, stopped to consider that _firebending_ could be used to heal. Just blacken and destroy. She looked over to the stove, where Zuko had collected some neatly-cut logs which he would later set aflame for her to cook with, and felt bad. After all, cooking, one of the few things that was an odd mix of work and comfort to her both, involved fire. Was it really so silly to think that it could usher in life to someone who seemed so dead?

Katara stole another glance at Ursa. The woman was beautiful, poignant, and even now, the softness of her voice felt like it could soothe away whatever mental bruises Katara might have developed during the day. A little like Kya, her own mother, had done many times in the past.

And with an odd lump in her throat, Katara wondered if perhaps _that_ might have had something to do with why she was still breathing after Azula had slipped into the house last night. Perhaps Azula hadn't come here to plot and destroy. Perhaps she had come to remember. And maybe Ursa's voice, something she had once only nursed in memories, was enough to persuade her, for just this one night, to leave Katara and her brother be.

* * *

Nobody could rightly say that Zuko's decision was wrong. So Katara rallied herself, gathered her belongings, and mourned the sight of the dirty laundry she had no time to do.

'You know,' Zuko offered, a hint of a tease in his voice, 'since you're consorting with the Fire Lord now, you could take advantage of the fact that I have a whole host of servants at my beck and call back in the palace. I'm sure they could help lighten the load.'

Katara tore her despondent stare from a nice blue robe and the way mud had wormed into the edges of the white-wave-like trim, to offer him a glare blacker that the dirt her fingernails were currently brushing against. He didn't even so much as wince. In fact, the rotter laughed.

She sputtered. 'That's not funny! I'm not relying on other people to do my washing!'

Zuko shook his head, a fond smile now dancing on his lips. 'Katara...' He stepped forward, his arms coming up to loosely fold over her waist. And suddenly Katara felt a little shy, like she was a girl pretending to be a wife. 'I'm sorry I'm cutting this vacation short. It's been good. Um, real good.' He seemed to stop, his expression twisting as though he wanted to find a better adjective to describe their time together.

Katara waited, making no effort to hide the smirk that was curling her mouth.

He saw it and sighed, looking a little grouchy as he did so. 'Stop it.' And then, as though to reinforce his words, he kissed her, a strong push of his mouth onto hers, with just enough pressure to change the shape of her smile. She looked at him, wide-eyed as he pulled back swiftly, as though his touch had been nothing stronger than a butter-bee alighting on a flower, then taking flight again.

And then it was his turn to grin.

Katara gave him a fierce look, then soared forward, arms pressed firmly round his neck as she sought to give him a kiss that would make his jaw drop. They still had little experience with each other, but judging by the distracting nuzzles of Zuko's fingers into her hair, he was a quick learner.

...Not that she was a mere slouch in that department herself either, of course...

The next few minutes were spent with a frenzy of pushes and pulls, their mouths latching onto each other and diving into hot, wet depths, only glancingly explored till now. Zuko was a little more gentler than she, inquisitively running his tongue over the rim of her teeth and pasting the wet muscle against her own, while Katara favoured giving him a tiny nip, to distract him into letting her lead the dance between them.

The sun was well on its own dance across the sky, when a red flare, quicker than a brushstroke, darted across the window, giving a quick impression of feathers and wings. It dived into the room adjacent to their own causing a squeal from Kiyi's mouth to emerge, and before Zuko and Katara could awaken themselves from each other in order to process it, she clattered into their room, heedless of their right to privacy.

'Zu-zu, Zu-zu, you've got a haaawwk-oh!' Her mouth dropped open, slurring the last word, while the half-named bird, thoroughly unimpressed with its surroundings, perched on her shoulder and began to clean its wing. 'Ooooooh!' Kiyi sprang back with a shout, a devilish glean in her eye; nonplussed, the hawk jolted at the sudden movement and offered it's new human perch a disgusted look. 'Zu-zu's got a girlfriend, Zu-zu's got a girlfriend!' And with a cackle, she dove out of the room.

Katara and Zuko fumbled their way apart, just quick enough to see the hawk give up and float off to its chosen landing spot, all as Kiyi's laugh took on the same sinister manner as Toph's. It caused her shoulders to jump and shake in tiny earthquake-like movements and the last they both saw of her was the hawk trailing after her like the ongoing flare of a scarlet robe.

As soon as she disappeared, Katara coughed, smoothed out her robe, fiddled with her hair, and then blushed ruby-red as Ikem and Ursa peered in through the doorway, knowing smiles perched on their faces. Zuko stepped forward to greet them, his own face now doused in pink. He opened his mouth. And let words fail him.

Ikem gave him a grin. 'I just came to get some of that crushed ice Katara promised me...'

Katara wanted to sink into the floor and die.

Zuko patted her shoulder, his own embarrassed cough slipping out of him as he took another step forward. 'I wasn't expecting a hawk for at least another hour,' he managed, failing to give an awkward smile. In fact, more of an awkward grimace came up to steal over his face instead. He determinedly failed to look at his mother. 'Shall we go and see what all the fuss is about?'

* * *

A minute later, the mood had fallen completely.

'Someone broke into my Father's cell, last night.' Zuko spoke to them all stiffly over the kitchen table, though Katara felt his eyes land solidly on hers. Perhaps because they were soldiers who had faced Azula together before, or perhaps not. His voice steadily rose above Kiyi's protests; apparently she wanted to keep the messenger hawk as a pet. 'Whoever they were, they left a burn on his throat. A scar in the shape of a hand.'

Katara swallowed, noticing the steady look in Ursa's eyes. The woman was pale, shocked, and though there was no smile on her lips, in her eyes rested a vindicated look.

...Katara shouldn't go. She really shouldn't. She didn't want to. Not to help Ozai.

'I'll come,' she told Zuko without hesitation.

And the expression on his face then, was so tender, so wondering, that she couldn't bring herself to regret not saying 'no.'

* * *

The scar had blotched the veins in Ozai's throat, forced his voice down into a croak, a gasp. He watched Katara with furious eyes, the twist of a sneer melting away into pain, then baffled amazement as she lay her dusky hand against the red blister that crept over his neck and pushed water against it with enough gentleness to make him let out a soothing sigh. One that cracked and tore into an animalistic noise as it expanded past a second.

'It'll scar,' she said firmly. 'There's nothing I can do about that.'

Zuko was behind her, his presence cutting a cool, silent line across her back. But Katara kept her eyes on her work, taking in the red blemish of a hand braided into Ozai's throat as though someone had tried to choke him. It wasn't tear-drop-shaped and didn't race round the contours of his skin the way Zuko's did, but frothed up there in the same ugly fashion, to arrange the tattered flesh into a tangled mess. To Katara's eye, it looked to be a ruptured web of welted blisters. But to her hand, it was the disrupted pathways and the scream of damaged nerves that caught at her sense, the way the burn ran heavy and ragged into the muscles that moved the throat and controlled the vibration of sound as it travelled up, to reach through the tongue and teeth and into the air. It could well be that Ozai would never be able to speak in quite the same way again. Maybe, never at all.

How fitting, Katara thought, but didn't say. Some words, she knew, however cruel, didn't need to be said. Koh, apparently wasn't the only thing out there who liked to punish.


	9. And see out, away

Days passed. Katara had a rich, red room to herself, the colour a constant ache against her eyes whenever she woke up. And sometimes the heat of the air, when she first breathed it in, was like a slap in the face, a muggy swamp she had to climb through when she pushed herself upright out of the covers; a far cry from the stinging chill of her arctic homeland. It wasn't that she missed having to coat herself in layers just to stay alive, it was just...so Fire Nation. And it wasn't as though she woke up to find Zuko tucked against her side either.

He would still find her, hours from when she awoke, in certain minutes, and during the quick rests he reserved for lunch, just to feel the warmth of her side, or glide a hand over her cheek or the other soft curved lines she attempted to pull her hair back into, away from her face.

'Is it too much?' he asked her once, maybe twice, the nervousness in his voice betraying him.

Katara smiled. 'I can't stay pampered forever,' she said airily, frowning at the twitch in his smile. 'I'm a peasant and these people...' her hands spread out, motioning to the shadows, and all the spaces imaginary politicians filled, spaces Mai was striving to keep them out of. 'The people who you have to work with,' she settled on lamely. 'They don't like me.'

Zuko frowned. 'They don't know you. If they did-'

'- _if_ they did,' Katara cut in harshly, 'they still wouldn't want to. I'm Water Tribe. Some of them are better at it, at _overlooking'_ –and here the word emerged from her mouth, all spat out and harsh- 'it. But plenty of them look at me and see me as some passing floozy of yours.'

His lips twitched again, though Katara could still see a faint stir of anger in his eyes. 'Floozy? I never thought I'd hear you say that word.'

Katara shrugged. 'If the boot fits...or at least, that's what _they_ think.'

Zuko's hand fell from her hair and Katara caught his wrist before it could leave her personal space completely. 'I want to stay with you, but there's still things out there, I have to be doing. People I could help. I'll never be the useful Fire Lady Mai could be, but I can be a healer or a fighter for people like me: peasants.'

Zuko flinched, but Katara kept her grip on his wrist tight and firm, enough to let him know not to step back. 'You've never been that,' he said urgently. 'You're...I mean peasant is such a stupid word anyway, it sounds dismissive, and I know now that it doesn't do a thing to describe anyone's worth-'

Katara's hand landed on the side of his face.

'Zuko,' she said, fighting to hold back a smile of her own. 'Breathe.'

He did. And Katara watched the slump of his shoulders with a fully satisfied smile.

'Sorry,' he said quietly as her fingers spread, creating a soft fan over the space of harsh colour his scar filled out beneath the gaps. She frowned at it. Some nights she stayed up late with him, drawing water over the pink crusts and letting it sink in, to settle and re-hydrate cells that could no longer soften or replenish themselves in the way they once had. She often did the same to the other scar, the one he had received for her, feeling the thunder of his heartbeat race through the water she drew out over his ribs. It felt like all of him was a battleground, and it moved her in a strange way that she had rarely experienced with any other patient.

'You don't have to be sorry,' she said firmly, surprised at just how sad her voice sounded to her ears. 'You're the Fire Lord. I expected this.' Then she sighed and finally allowed her hand to drop from his face, letting the fingers of her other one loosen to grant Zuko's wrist a quick escape. 'But I expect a lot from myself as well. I need to be out there, doing what I do best. Helping people. Not cosseted away like a pampered...'

'Person?' Zuko finished off for her with a gentle smile.

Katara smiled back. 'Exactly!'

Zuko tilted his head to the side. 'You would have been good for Aang,' he said, a heavy tone to his voice. 'You would have enjoyed the air nomad lifestyle, wandering from place to place. Katara; is this really what you want?'

'I know it's selfish,' Katara said hotly, her emotion flaring up to colour her voice. 'But-!'

She was cut off by the soft touch of Zuko's hand as it settled over the nape of her neck, curling over the small slide of bone there, his fingers brushing up into the fall of her hair.

'Since when is being selfish always a bad thing?' he questioned. 'I've been selfish long enough to know you're overdue a spree of your own. It's certainly not going to make me stop liking you. L-loving you even.'

He stumbled over the verb, flushing red and hot, and something in Katara lifted up and danced at the sight. That verb, that word, the very idea of him loving her...it was something not quite spoken about between them, only so far present in his hand and his touch, and the way the gold in his eyes caught at her when he stared as though to drink her in.

'Yes,' she said, fighting the tremble in her voice. 'I love you. And I love helping people. So that's precisely what I want to spend the rest of my life doing.'

The next day, she set sail for the South Pole.

* * *

It was good to breath in the air, to fill it cut a chill against all the exposed parts of her skin, namely her face, and feel it wound her lungs with its temperature as she breathed it in.

She pulled some of Aunt Ashuna's famed seal jerky between her teeth, the thick, brown slab of it crackling under the pressure, almost as hard as stone as she let her jaw and salvia take on the monumental work of a pestle and mortar stone. The woman had been friendly, her eyes alive with a sparkling inquisitiveness, as she mentioned Katara's newfound inches in height, and asked how that 'nice young Avatar lad' was doing. Katara remembered her smile dying a prompt death at the question, but she had endeavoured to save the moment by saying a little too brightly 'fine! He's doing _fine!_ He's promptly teaching someone a new dance somewhere, you know how he is!'

Ashuna was not her Gran Gran; she didn't remember the precise way in which Katara's brow would wrinkle when she lied a little too hard, or understand the stress in her laugh as a dead giveaway of deceit. But something in her face had dulled at Katara's tone all the same, and her smile slowly changed into something more sympathetic.

'Ah,' she had said softly. 'So it's like that, is it? Well, never mind.' She stained upwards, to give Katara a pat on the shoulder. 'Plenty of fine young men out there still. Far too many fish in the sea for us ladies to limit ourselves to only one in our lifetime, eh?'

She had cackled at the wry look on Katara's face in return.

Now, Katara stood in front of Gran Gran's igloo, still stubbornly refusing to be re-modeled into one of the tall apartment-like buildings that surrounded it. The blocks of ice that formed its curved dome were still smooth and lovely to her eyes, but against the cold ice walls of the other flats, they now looked almost clunky in comparison.

Katara pulled in a harsh breath through her nose. And brushed the curtain guarding the entrance-way aside.

'I'm home,' she called out, a waver in her tone.

Sokka instantly looked up, a bright beam entering his smile as he placed the weapon he was sharpening down on the ground. 'Katara! You're early.'

She grinned. 'Aaaah...so that's why you weren't there to greet me at the port? Not because you were distracted with your shiny man-toy?'

Sokka gave a fake frown. 'Hey; it's a good toy!' and stepped up to give her a big hug as Pakku, rolled his eyes, took a long sip of the soup Kanna handed him and muttered, 'it's not a toy, at all.'

Both Katara and Sokka ignored him. And when they pulled away from each other, Katara couldn't help but give her brother a fond, relived smile. 'I'm sorry, I didn't write more. I just wanted a break, you know? And...' she trailed off, unsure how to put in words, the feelings that she felt as though she betrayed Team Avatar in some ways. She felt a rush of longing then, for the way things had been at the start of the journey to save the world, just the three of them, back when Aang had been more of a fun-loving child than the young adult he was now. And then she felt guilt for that too.

Sokka gave her a look. 'Is the jerkbender treating you okay?' he asked, and though his tone was far from 'I'm okay with this,' it was also warm, even kind of teasing. 'Because if he's not, then me and my 'man-toy' will have to have words. Or not, as the case may be...'

Katara sniggered and gave him a shove. 'Sure. Like I'll need my big brother to step in. Remember when I froze Jet to a tree?'

Sokka made a face at that. And Katara's smile softened. She hadn't told him and Suki and Toph what she was doing, and who she was spending time with until the very last minute. All her things had been packed, so that she wouldn't suddenly change her mind, and she had almost barrelled her way into her brother's room on the morning she had left Aang behind with heartbreak on his face. Impatient, she had rapped her knuckles against the door and paced the immediate corridor, waiting, her hand nervously paying with her hair.

'Sokka!' she had burst out with, as soon as he had opened the door, numerous complaints falling out of his mouth, as his rumpled hair swung over his eyes. Those had all come to a halt though, at the sound of the distress in her voice.

'Katara?'

'I'm sorry, I'm sorry,' she fiercely whispered, hands barrelling into his shirt with a force almost equal to a punch. 'I messed up, or I didn't yet, I'm not sure which, but I, I , I BROKE UP WITH AANG!' The last sentence had been torn from her as a choked yell and Sokka had quickly pulled her into his room, away from any prying ears, alarm on his face.

'You what?' he hissed as she closed the door. 'You and Guru lovey-dovey? The people who've been making it their mission in life to get me to throw up every morning with all your 'sweeties' and face nuzzles?'

Katara blinked back tears and nodded, shaking, as Suki slowly sat up in bed and observed them both with a steady look.

'Easy, Sokka,' she said softly, and like a magic spell, every bone in Sokka's body relaxed. He had still given his sister a fierce look though.

'Why?' he near-demanded. And on any other day, Katara would have taken offence to that. But that morning she had met his eyes with a determined swallow.

'I...I don't love him in quite the same way he loves me.' The words had stumbled out of her, fast and heavy. 'I haven't for a while. There's someone else instead.' She had even wanted to spit out 'it's complicated' but held herself back from uttering the cliché.

Sokka's eyes had swept over her then, raking over the expression in her face as though he had heard it anyway. 'You going to tell me who?'

Katara met his stare. 'Zuko,' she said it as firmly as she could. Then braced herself for the explosion.

It never came. Instead, Sokka sighed. Turned his head away. And muttered something under his breath. Then his gaze swung back to hers.

'...Alright. I mean, I think you're crazy, and you're playing with fire, _literally_ , but...' he paused, gaze raking over her again. '...You know I'm always on your side, right?'

Katara sniffed. How strange, that she could control herself in front of Aang, but in front of Sokka, she was close to breaking down completely.

'Thank you,' she had whispered.

...And now she was close to uttering it again. She had been a coward. And given the way Kanna and Paku hadn't been surprised at their earlier words, clearly Sokka had told them. Maybe even dad as well. But then, given how she had run off, and left him to pick up the pieces, for once, did she really have the right to chastise him for it?

As she was wondering, Sokka stepped back and then said, in the most faux casual voice she'd ever heard, ' _sooooo_ you and his princelyness, eh? This doesn't mean I have to start calling you your Highness, does it?'

She flashed him a brief smile, eerily aware of Gran Gran's eyes digging into her back. 'Not yet. But I wouldn't mind seeing you practise.'

He chortled. 'Wow, what a time for you to develop a sense of humour! That's going to drive Zuko crazy.' He mouth spread into a crazy elongated sneer. 'And I can't wait.'

Ah. There it was. The overprotective big brother she was both amused and exasperated by. She tutted, then turned and walked over to when Gran Gran was arranging whelk shells, rapping her wrinkled knuckles carefully against each one to ascertain the size of the prize inside.

'Need help?' she asked.

Gran Gran gave her a level stare. 'I hope you won't start dressing in red,' she said after a moment. Then she raised her hand, pressing a small shell into Katara's. 'I just don't want you to forget where you came from, my little waterbender.'

Katara smiled, though she knew by the way Gran Gran's eyes narrowed, that it was a rather wobbly one. 'That will _never_ happen.'

Gran Gran's fingers reached out again, this time to curl and extend in a beckoning motion. Obeying, Katara shifted and knelt, the coarse fur of the rug digging in through all the layers she was encased in, to wear a rough spot against her knees.

'You will be wearing a crown then, instead of a betrothal necklace?' her grandmother asked, and though her voice was deliberately light and airy, her gaze was anything but. No, it was heavy and sad and knowing, carrying the weight of sailing round the world and seeing a war that had not been ended for another sixty years. Not for the first time, Katara wondered what adventures her Gran Gran had had and if they were anything like the multiple happy endings she and her friends had managed to arrange for other people. She got the feeling they weren't.

Katara swallowed and let her hand bend back, to rest on the blue stone that Pakku had carved for the woman in front of her, back before any such adventures could take place. It was a stone that had seen so much, had even, at one point, lain against the still and heavy throat of her mother as she lay dying on the floor of their old igloo.

'Zuko won't be making any necklaces for me. And there won't be a crown. I can marry him; Zuko managed to wear the council down on that. But I can't have the title of 'Fire Lady' and I can't rule in his stead, if he passes on early. He's made a prevision that puts Mai as the acting regent if he doesn't have any children or if the children he has are still too young to rule.'

'Huh.' Sokka walks up them. 'You've both put a lot of thought into this haven't you?'

Katara smiled. 'I probably wouldn't want to stay in the Fire Nation if nobody I loved lived there; I can't ever imagine ruling it.' Her fingers pressed a little firmer against the stone at her throat, feeling the smooth jab of it digging into her skin. 'I want to do this right, as right as I can; that's what matters most to me.'

Her Gran Gran didn't smile at her. Didn't offer any congratulations or well-wishes. Just offered her another steady look.

'I'm glad you don't feel as though you have to run away,' she said finally. 'And more importantly; that you feel as though you can stop and say goodbye, each time you leave.'

Katara felt like crying. Instead she buried herself into her Gran Gran's arms, her cheeks nestled by the sweet seal-ermine smell of Kanna's hood. She would probably never understand Katara's choice; but she knew better than to try and chase her away from it.

And Katara found herself grateful.

* * *

Katara spent the week supervising Suru and Siki, making plans and timetables to come back and teach them new things. Zuko was right; being a nomad would have suited her fine. If she wasn't stuck inside the title of Fire Lady then she would drift in and out of those fine red corridors as she pleased, attend as many waterbending lessons she could manage, and maybe wander through hospitals and the poorer villages of the Fire Nation, the ones that yet to recover from the propaganda that striped away their livelihoods and uprooted the resources that would have used to provide for themselves, instead of the machines the passing armies built. Even without ready access to Appa, there were still so many things she could do.

'I can't wait to try them out,' she told the neat lines of stone in front of her. She stepped over the circle she remembered helping her dad and Sokka lay out years ago, and bent down to peer at the large rock that marked out Kya's burial spot. 'You were always wanting me to try out new things, Mom. I mean, I don't know how happy you would be about me ah, _dating_ a Firelord, but I think you'd like him. I mean, he sacrificed himself for me, the same way you did...'

Katara stopped to fight the familiar wobble in her voice.

'...so I reckon he'd win your approval for that if nothing else. And, well, he's adorable, the way he gets shy sometimes. You loved stuff like that, so I think you'd have loved him too.'

She sighed and stepped back, idly passing an eye over the wreath of purple and yellow plants that had been placed round the marker recently. Malina had been acting jumpy since this morning, and the bold shape of the petals, the stems more fern-like than flower, along with the typical Earth Kingdom slant of the veins, seemed to showcase this as her handiwork. It wasn't something Katara would have chosen personally, but she still gave Malina points for trying.

'I don't know whether you'd have loved Malina; liked her, yes. But loved? Eh...'

Rich laughter bloomed out of the air behind her, tumbled directly into her ears. And Katara turned slowly, unsurprised to see her Dad. She had registered the crunch of his footsteps a few seconds beforehand, but it had felt wrong, cowardly even to halt the flow of her voice and disrupt her feelings towards her mother.

Hakoda smiled at her, something in his eyes flickering as they swept over his former wife's grave. 'She's trying, Katara.'

Katara sighed. 'I know. And I like her, I do. I just...I'm not sure I'll ever really care about her as though she's family.'

Hakoda sighed. 'I could say the same about Zuko.'

Katara's eyes fastened onto his face at lightening speed. 'I guess...it must have come out of nowhere for you, huh?'

'A little,' he said steadily. 'I thought you and Aang would last longer and I was surprised when you didn't. You and the Firelord, I did not see coming at all. But then I haven't spend as much time with him as I have with Aang, not enough to get a good sense of who he is.' He sighed again. 'But you're old enough now to know what you're doing. I have to trust that.'

'You can,' Katara said quickly. 'You told me that the real, right kind of love allows you to see. I had that with Aang, sort of, and I have it with Zuko. There was no wrong or right decision here. Just one I made for me.'

His hand clamped down on her shoulder. And he smiled. 'Then I guess I can ask for nothing more.'

* * *

In with the heel, out with the other foot, then swivel, flash out with the right arm... despite the hardness of her movements, Katara kept the motion of her body smooth and undulating, like a wave. The way Pakku had taught her. It was hard, trying to crave the knife-like fluidity of the Southern-style Hama had showed her, and make room for it against the more dance-like structure of Northern-style. She wondered if the differences reflected the mindsets both tribes had adopted; the Northern being bigger, better protected and having time to develop their culture and make waterbending a performance at times, while the smaller South used it for more practical purposes, for survival, rather than an elegant dance-form they could indulge in. It made her sad to think of it.

'What do you think?' she had asked Pakku that morning. Thankfully, he had kept tight-lipped about the subject of her and Zuko. But then again, he was a member of the White Lotus, had interacted with people from different Nations before; perhaps that sort of thing was a less a shock to him than it might be for other Water Tribe members.

He had regarding her heavily, the night before, as she finally bit out the tale of Hama, to him and Gran Gran both, shying away from the pain in Kanna's eyes. But still, it had felt important that she be there, one of the few people who might have been old enough to remember the person Hama had been.

'She was so nice at first,' Katara had murmured, staring into her bowl of soup. The green had caught the reflection her eyes made, turned them murky and hollow. 'I thought she was a hero; and she taught me everything I had always wanted to know, craved, since I was a little girl. Everything i thought our tribe had lost forever. And then...and then I learnt she had developed a new technique, one she was using to hurt people.' She looked up at Pakku. 'Bloodbending.'

For the first time in her life, she saw him flinch. And not in the same way she now made him jump back in practise sessions. No, this was a full-scale shake that ran through his frame, that made his eyes widen in horror.

'It was how she escaped. And she could only use it on the full-moon; but she was still using it now, to 'punish' the civilians she was living with, forcing them to march themselves into a prison that she was the keeper of. It was so twisted and it hurt.' She shuddered. 'I...I had to learn it, to use it to save Aang and Sokka. '

Gran Gran had wandered off, had cut herself free from the conversation, burying her hand in an old chest to sort through some belongings she had kept when she was a girl. It made something in Katara shake to see it, especially when Kanna had sighed over an old comb that she drew out, long and blue, eerily familiar to the one Katara saw Hama handle with reverence months ago

Pakku had been quiet too. 'Have you ever used bloodbending since?' he asked, a stern, neutral tone to his voice.

Katara had wanted to lie, say no, no, I haven't. Instead she said, 'yes,' in a low voice that cost her. Yes, yes, she thought, I have. I did. She tugged her hands into her knees when she heard the shattering clink of Gran Gran's comb hitting the floor. And even thought perhaps she shouldn't have, she spat out; 'I was wrong, I thought it was the man that...the man that...killed...' her voice trailed off. 'But it wasn't,' she added. 'His name was Yon Rha, he killed my mother for lying, for claiming she was the last waterbender of the Southern Tribe in my place, and he murdered her for it.' She had been close to tears. Shuddering, her eyes locked on the floor instead of the soup, and then there was a small, icy touch on her chin.

Katara had gasped, jerked upright, and the thin trail of water twisting over Pakku's hand, had dropped from her cheek. For once, that had been an actively watery sheen to his eyes. And the unthinkable happened. His arms, lowered, spread. His head fell to the floor. Against the snow his forehead had rubbed, white power crunching and bristling, as he bowed to her as though she were Tui or La reborn.

'I apologise,' he croaked out, and never, never, had Katara heard him sound so old before. 'For not coming here sooner. There were so many of us in the North. Maybe if some of us had come sooner, you and your people would not have suffered so much.'

Katara looked at him dully. Pictured Hama wrapped in blue instead of red, acting like a proper mentor, no trace of hatred on her face as she taught the waterbending style, that in another life Katara would have learnt instead of the Northern style she had had to fight to claim a right to. She saw her mother, alive, smiling as her eight year old daughter showed her a trick that could have sent Yon Rha spluttering into the snow.

And then she pushed the daydream away.

'You're here now.' She made her voice speak, let it unfold in a stiff, gravely tone. 'You found Gran Gran again.' She swallowed. 'Get up Sifu Pakku. Please.' And then, because, after all, he had taught her waterbending, had taught how to fight and save the world, she said: 'I forgive you.'

Pakku, who had stiffened when she dropped the title of 'Sifu' on him, straightened. And the next morning, after Katara had posed her question to him, about how the two Tribe's waterbending styles differed, and whether it was influenced by their separate circumstances had answered. 'Naturally, they are different because of how we have been shaped. So perhaps, we should try to blend them. The two forms can exist independently of each other still. But perhaps, given how the division weakened our Tribes as a whole, we can work on generating a third form.'

So now Katara was hard at work, trying to push and pull two different way of moving together. South was more rigid and sharp, like the cut of a strong wave, while North was more moderate, like the falling crest of said wave, before it began to roll into something smoother. It was hard. But honestly poetic.

...And maybe one day something she could teach Aang, maybe even teach the next Avatar. That would be nice.

She sighed, felt sweat run under her furs. The sun was out in the sky, high enough to make the snow sparkle a glittering, blinding white, and not for the first time, she wanted to bring Zuko down with her to see it.

'You're so creative.'

Katara stumbled, then whipped round to see Malina watching her wistfully.

'I use my bending to build, not to fight. And even I would have hesitated to think of combining our two Tribes styles.'

Katara swallowed, cut down the sharp retort than until recently there had been no Southern style to speak of existing in either Tribe. No, it had been stuck inside the head of a woman too damaged by war to ever return to either. It could have easily died there.

'Who taught you?' Katara found herself asking hastily, and as she did so, she realised that she actually was curious.

Malina looked away. 'I was raised in the Earth Kingdom. My father was born in the Northern Tribe, but my mother came from the swamp. I was lucky that my Father wasn't a bender; if he was, I think he would have protested my mother teaching me, that he would have felt like some sort of gate-keeper to the tradition practised in the North. But as it was, he was a lot more relaxed about the subject. It's only more recently that I was able to piece together some of the Northern style, now that women are allowed to learn.' She gave Katara a timid smile. 'My combinations are a lot more recent. And like I said, built for architecture rather than combat.'

'I think it's good,' Katara admitted. 'Using bending for more than fighting. You know, recently I learnt that there used to be a firebending used for healing, for helping people stuck in trances or comas.'

Malina's eyes lit up as her hands clapped together. 'That sounds...amazing. Oh, you do have such wonderful stories, Katara! I'm a little jealous of your bravery. I'm not sure if I could ever pluck up the courage to go to the Fire Nation!'

Katara gave her a look. 'You know I'm involved with...'

'Firelord Zuko? Oh yes,' Malina stated. 'Why would that bother me?'

Why would it, Katara repeated numbly to herself. Malina hadn't been brought up inside a Tribe filled with rigid traditions. She had lived amongst a whole other culture, probably seen many other inter-racial couples. In some ways, she was probably more open-minded than some of the Southerners Katara had spent the majority of her life beside. People who still didn't know she was with Zuko.

Katara puffed out a breath of air. 'I don't know. I just know that it definitely will bother some people here.'

Malina gave her a sympathetic smile.

'Do you want to join me?' Katara asked after a moment. 'I haven't got everything sorted yet, but you've got more knowledge of Swamp style waterbending than me. Maybe you might have some new ideas.'

Malina's whole face lit up. And maybe, Katara thought, this was the point. Bridging the gaps between people and their practises, like Aang did for their world and the spirits'. All to make people smile.

'Here,' she said, twisting her palm slightly. 'I think we should start off with something like this...'

* * *

When Katara burst back into Zuko's life, she brought scores of luggage with her, rugs from beasts slaughtered in the sleet and snow, bowls that bore only blue and brown and silver in their designs, and more importantly, endless rolls of blue fabric for her wardrobe. She hummed and cut, her needle first twinkling under candlelight at night, and then gleaming within the bright spill of sunlight in the daytime, as she pulled together all the peasant clothing she could need. Enough that she would never be forced to wear red.

Zuko watched her sometimes, and then, on day three of her workload, clasped at her hand and pulled her from her self-imposed exile. 'I'm glad you haven't finished unpacking,' he told her with a wry grin. 'Because you now allowed to share the oh-so-sacred space of his Highness.'

He spun her into his room with a move, she swore she had seen him practised a dozen times with Aang and then he dipped down into a sweeping bow that made her laugh. Zuko did know how to have fun; it just wasn't something he always felt comfortable enough to show.

She turned. And stared. Most of his room was the same. But the wide mirror, which before had been burnished by a brown frame, was now outlined with thin reeds of bone, dipped and dyed in blue, with familiar wolf motifs swirling through the panels.

'Oh...'

'I figured since you brought so much of your home with you, you'd want to add a little bit of it here as well.'

Katara turned and pushed herself at him, trusting in his strong frame to wrap her back up in a welcoming hug.

'Welcome home,' she heard his voice rumble above her, all of it dipping into warmth and relief. 'One of them, anyway.'


	10. From the blue I was shaped

Sometimes letters came. Sometimes they didn't. Sometimes Katara went to the South Pole for months, to visit her Father, to talk to her Mother's grave, and to make sure Suru and Siki weren't just taught Northern style waterbending. Sometimes she didn't. She had never realised before, how freeing it was to not have a quest or a chore to look forwards to, to go at her own pace, and not be dragged on a round-the-world-trip to protect the people she loved.

'Come,' Zuko told her one afternoon, fingers still slightly stained with ink from a new document he had been drafting. Katara refrained from bending the dark smears off her fingers, allowing them to settle into their whorls. It would be different, of course, if Zuko had been laying such dirty things across her bare skin – then she would quite happily thrust water over them both.

Zuko grinned and dragged her out into the light, into an new garden to the side of the palace, rows and rows of fire-lilies weaving across the landscape, in freshly planted clusters and circles. It was like a bunch of red moons dotted across the lawn, spilling into the green space that stretched out and away from their feet; their own private universe.

'Oh...' Katara dropped his hand and started forward. Her breath caught in her throat at their scent, a smoky, almost meat-like tang. Not her personal favourite, but...

'You said they were your favourite flowers from the Fire Nation,' Zuko said behind her, painfully shy. 'I thought...I wasn't sure how well Earth Kingdom flowers would grow here, so I had to settle for second-best but...I just wanted you to have something nice.'

Katara instantly turned to him, squeezed his neck, and planted a hefty kiss on his lips. It was something she was getting better at doing, no longer quite as quick to lose her balance whenever she had to stretch up to reach him.

'I have plenty of nice things,' she told him primly. 'You, for instance. Right?'She playfully shoved him, giving him a gentle elbow to the chest. It was something she tended to do mainly to Sokka, but Zuko seemed happy enough to roll with the punches, as it were.

He still rubbed the place she had made contact with, with an exaggerated wince though. 'Toph is a bad influence on you,' he said wryly. 'But, yes: you have me.'

Katara beamed. Then turned, ready to dive back into the flowers waiting for her.

* * *

 _I was angry_ , stated the letter from Aang that arrived that afternoon. _Because you lied. You never meant it to merely be a break. You came back after healing Ozai and I knew; I knew something had happened. You didn't need to say it; it was all in the way you looked at me and said you were sorry._

 _I'm sorry too. Sorry that you felt frozen, just saying those words to me. Because I want you happy, Katara. That's all I've ever wanted. I just wish you could have let yourself be happy with me._

Katara traced over the lines and swooping curves of ink with a tired thumb. For half a moment she wanted to nestle against Aang's side, use that same thumb to prod at his cheek, smooth over it as though calming a baby. Then she looked down at Zuko, his head nestled into her thighs, the royal sweep of the bed around them flooded with light and felt a painful clawing sensation rise up in her chest. It felt rather like catharsis. Because this, here, wasn't too different from what she had with Aang. Just better.

She breathed. Touched Zuko's scar. Bent down to kiss it. And resolved to herself, to stay happy, no matter what lay in her dreams waiting for her.

* * *

In a city, abandoned to history, someone walked. They leapt over the traps that fell and sprang open, they slipped past shadows that would have made a lesser person shiver. They moved round the edges of the jungle that spoke of light, of a campfire closeted by leaves and trunks, that filtered out the light like the bars to a cell. They slammed fist and nails into the sides of the few throats that were unlucky enough to sweep under their gaze, on routine patrol. The last thing these unlucky few saw was the rose-petal-like curve of dark lips, blooming into a cruel, satisfied smirk.

No one was there to watch that new shadow slip up stairs. No drumbeats pounded out to accompany their footwork, light and slight, as was tradition. The Sun warriors slept. The moon, and its domain, so richly closeted by waterbenders, had no pull over their bodies.

The figure paused. A soft blue light lit up their hand. And then after a flicker of a second, with hardly any hesitance to sour their step, they turned to the left.

'Zu-zu wasn't the only one who listened to your fancy stories, Uncle,' Azula spat. 'He was the one you bothered to tell them to, of course; but I saw grandfather's journals. I read between the lines of your mission reports. I know you hid something down here. Something big.'

She lifted her blue flame up to her face. 'And now it's time it helped me be big too.'

* * *

Azula stared down into the cave, into the two golden eyes that reared out to strike her in the soul with their keen animal focus. They slammed into her with the intensity of the sun, some alien emotion filling their gaze and slowly stripping away her confidence.

In...out...in...out...each snarling breath, each timed pant, Azula mimicked. Small plumes of flame rolled out to paste the stones at her feet with a golden light, before shifting enough to display the blue scales and their shimmer that looked more fish-like than reptilian.

'You are one of the masters here,' Azula said. 'You will...' she choked herself off at the snarl that reverberated through the tunnel at her command.

'You can teach me,' she amended. She wasn't stupid. To many people she was a dragon, capable of clawing them apart. To a dragon...well...she was a fish.

The dragon shifted closer. And Azula refused to bite her lip, to tremble and quake at their closeness.

The dragon closed its eyes. And rolled out a breath, so fiery and hot, that the space around Azula warped with heat, a shimmer before her gaze as the tunnel exploded with light. Red wrapped round her, around her skin and clothes, playing with the frayed black ends of her robes.

Azula was stunned. The trembling shakes of fire, of lighting she called up, snapped and frayed, the intense heat pushed her body down to the ground, to swallow down gulps of air frantically. And yet...the coils of red, the dances at the edge of her vision...she felt something in her mind lift. Warmth flared and rolled through her soul.

The dragon reared up and sprang over her fallen shape. Like a serpent it slithered over her. Wonderingly, Azula followed. No, she crawled, shattered, like a baby, she stumbled over to it, arms forced into a spare set of legs as her palms cut against stones and sharp fish bones littering the tunnel. Out into the night she breathed, falling onto the platform that linked her to the stairs and the ground waiting below.

The dragon soared up, painting a dark bridge to block out the stars, and still fumbling, Azula twirled to follow the pattern. She was a prodigy and genius, one who had _worked_ to stay lucky, no matter what Zuko or her father may have believed. Part of that learning had involved observing, taking note of each flex of muscle as someone older and more experienced that her performed a move she should never have been able to copy until years afterwards. And the way that dragon above her moved...it pulled at something in her.

Clumsily, like the girl of eight she had once been, Azula's arms swooped down, then up, rising like the wings that beat above her. Her knee twisted, her leg unfurled, and her foot jutted out into the air at the same angle as the dragon's snout, now pointed towards the heavens. Some of course, she got wrong. Everyone made mistakes before they became perfect, it was part of mastering the craft. But as always, humiliation bubbled within her every time the dragon snarled in displeasure, each rebuke a fiery brand against her spirit. Azula hated being anything less than flawless. Throughout the night, the hours, she watched the curve and loop of the dragon's scales, experimented, and felt her movements grow slower, more curved and composed.

And then, as sun began to spike over the horizon, the dragon landed before her. Its snout dipped and weaved as it drew out long curls of orange flame, the neck arcing and weaving like the long, slow slide of a bender's arms as they moved their hands over someone's chest...

Azula blinked and stepped back, bile in her stomach. For a moment her hands had drifted out as though to trace the coils of flame, as though to copy the very same pattern. A pattern that reminded her of brown hands that cradled the scar she'd given her brother that night she'd been defeated.

She hissed, eyes narrowed in fury like a cat-eagle's. Her mind was clear, sharp, in the way it had used to be. Felt clearer and sharper, now that those curls of flames were riding the air in front of her, close enough to reach out and touch. Each fission of heat over her skin calmed the rolling beat of her heart, relaxed her muscles, cleared her mind. Yanked into her a sharp and sudden awareness of her chi and the way it spiked and rallied in her to produce fire.

'No.' her fists clenched. 'You're telling me to imitate that filthy peasant!'

Yes, Azula had learnt by observing as well as practising. And just as she had observed her old teachers, and the Dai Li, she had also, on some level observed the only waterbender who had made her struggle to achieve victory, and who had, on the most fateful occasion of all, beaten her completely.

The dragon snorted over her gently.

Azula breathed. Remembered the way these movements, these eddying motions of flames felt over her skin, and raised her hands. Out her breath came, warm and rolling, until fire spurted from her mouth. Because it was time to get to work.

And as those hours raced by, the Sun Warriors started to gather at the bottom of the stairs, glaring up at her as they nursed bruises on their neck. Azula did not spare them a glance; she was too wrapped up in the circular movement she copied from the sky, of the way, she brought fire out of her movements and made them flow, slow and gentle. The dragon drew itself through the sky in a glide above her, snorting out its happiness, the long line of it blue and slow, like the gentle unfolding of a water-whip and Azula grit her teeth at the resulting flash of memory, chasing away the sensation of a peasant clipping her hair with a long arm of water in a glowing catacomb below Ba Sing Se.

For she had always been a hard worker, more than Zu-zu ever gave her credit for. And eventually, hours later, as her limbs shook, as her lung almost collapsed, the pain stabbing through her body, the dragon drew itself down and coiled lazily round her form. Azula felt the warmth pulse around her back, the feather-like quiver of its tail-tip resting on her lap. And then a cough, a great hulking cough, shaking her to the core and rattling her ribs.

Darkness passed overhead, a spread of it detaching itself from the clouds nearby and drifting down, the sun playing out broad strokes of red against its scarlet coat, a second dragon touched down, eyes like live coals. And all Azula could do was gasp, limbs shaking in exhaustion as it curled its head down towards her and deposited a hunk of red, glistening meat in front of her. It hit her leg with a wet slap, and despite the ruby slew of gristle and blood, Azula did not turn away. She did, however allow herself to wrinkle her nose.

'How barbaric,' she drawled, letting one long silver of flame draw out of her finger.

The dragons naturally, did nothing to help her cook their gift. And Azula was careful not to walk away from anything, drawing moisture from the blood, in place of water, smearing her mouth with the juice of a kill still fresh from the hunt. Eventually, after she was satisfied, she drew herself up and stumbled towards the stairs. There, she stood for a minute, wind in her uneven hair, that was, eventually, after months of care, starting to look less lop-sided. Gone were the long, curve of bangs; now they hung short like squares, cheek-length, to help box in the face beneath the harsh fringe she had chopped for herself. It didn't suit her, looked more like something a Water Tribe barbarian would wear. But then again, Azula had been learning, this last year, that adapting to something outside the Fire Nation was something she needed to pay more attention to.

Azula looked down, to the warrior below, their drums still, and their forms blurred against the rocks. Like armadillo-ants, she thought savagely. She waited until the trembling in her frame had stopped completely. And then she walked down the stairs, cool poise in every step. Almost nonchalantly, she raised her head and inclined her chin towards the blue dragon which had started to circle overhead. With a rush it flew down to arch over her, not quite menacingly.

Azula hadn't guessed it would happen. She had _known_ it _would._

With barely a glance she drifted past the warriors. Stopped directly in front of their chief. And waited, until he stepped aside to let her pass.

* * *

Katara rose, practically bolted out of the bed, the memory of ice gold eyes chasing her from her dreams. She tripped and flailed, duvet converted into a long loose ribbon as it wrapped around her legs and landed on the floor. For a moment she stayed there and breathed, utterly still.

Then, trembling, she pulled water from the bowl she had left on her nightstand and pushed it against her brow. The throb of her head died in time to the rhythmic kneading of her fingers over her skin and eventually, she pushed the water back into the bowl in one long stream of motion.

'What was that?' she breathed.

Nothing answered her, but the worry, lodged in her stomach, like a knife, continued to twist for the rest of the day. And she hated it. It was there, when she looked at her food at the breakfast, as she touched the neatly-made rice-cakes with her chopsticks. It was there as Zuko took her hand afterwards and asked her, quietly but urgently what was wrong. It was there as she fobbed him off and lied horribly about having a headache.

It was there, it was there, it was there.

Eventually, Katara backed off from the book she was reading later that morning, head nursed between her palms as no amount of soothing water could make her worry ebb. The words ran before her eyes, transforming into inky blots with no meaning and she gasped, turning to flee from the library.

'I'll be in the city, if anyone asks,' she told the palanquin bearers at the palace entrance, refusing their aid, as she always did. She had two good feet, used to trekking through ice and snow and much harsher terrain; she didn't need to be carried anywhere.


	11. And the jewel I was for the day

It wasn't easy to blend in with the rest of the citizens; though Katara did find other people's complextion here sometimes mirrored the dark hue that ran over her own skin, the curves of her hair, paired up with the unrelenting blue of her eyes _and_ the well-known gossip that the Fire Lord and his palace often played host to the coming and goings of the Avatar's waterbending master…well, it often marked her out to anybody who got a good glance at her face. She could lessen the effect sometimes by wrapping herself up in robes of red or dark brown, and by adorning her hair with a stylised top-knot and a harsh red hair-piece that resembled either a spear or the sharp curve of the crescent moon; but today she had rushed out without thinking and the blue of her tribal clothes drew eyes to her wherever she went. She was like a fish that had darted out into a river with a stronger current than she had expected, and she caught a glance, down one street, of a little girl staring at her, open-mouthed.

'Mommy, her hair-'

'Hush now, it's rude to stare.'

The woman yanked at her daughter's hand, those tiny fingers rapidly becoming lost in the loose, open fall of her sleeve, spread wide and hollow in a way that would never survive the biting climate of the South. Katara found her own hand reaching up to adjust a curving partition of her hair, fingers glancing over the beads that bulged up against the top of her forehead in hard cool knots of bone.

You're plenty rude yourself, she thought sorely.

Then, firming her shoulders, she stalked into one of the main courtyards, out where a fountain she was particularly fond of bubbled up like a geyser. There were dragons entwined in it's centre, long necks cork-screwing around each other, producing a patterned weave of their bodies that remained her of a hair braid. She longed to run a hand over them, but never quite dared to; she had noticed other people keeping their distance, only ever keeping to the rim of the fountain, in order to scoop up additional water with buckets or large pots.

Katara paused a safe distance away to watch the silver of the water sluicing from each open dragon mouth in a snarl, the sun catching each stroke of fluid movement and painting it an agonising white; she did not know how long she ended up staring at it, all while keeping herself pressed to a yellow wall curled over with a strange red ivy she lacked the name for. Until she felt calm at least.

What am I doing? She thought. I'm better than this. She sighed and moved to break from the wall – when something, a sixth sense honed from the battles she had been throwing herself into since she was fourteen and barely a real bender, alerted herself to the whoosh of hot air dive-bombing her. Katara wasted no time in diving towards the fountain. She fell short by a hopeless six metres of course, being on the other side of the square, and she felt the familiar pull of fire as it landed where she had been standing and spread out towards her in an unrelenting roll. Acting on instinct, and trying to ignore the panicked screams around her, Katara forced her body to move, to roll over out of her dive, arms flying up over her head as she skidded over onto her back in order to call up some protection. A crested wave of water was immediately spat out from the fountain, racing over the courtyard paving stones to wash over her body in a surge that barely beat out the rolling tide of blue fire as it continued its journey towards her.

Of course, she thought grimly. Of course it would be _blue_.

With another stroke of her arm, the water spun her round and twisted her body into an upright position, forming a small tornado round her form. Katara narrowed her eyes through the blur of liquid, idle but precise twitches of her fingers and wrist changing the spin and speed of her self-made prison as it pulled her round the yard, dodging round a few people too slow to flee the scene. She spotted a dim if familiar silhouette perched on the corner of a nearby building and flew forth, her tornado erupting into a harsh, upright wave that pushed her head up, just below the peak to snatch a few well-earned breathes. Her arms jettisoned outwards, causing a flurry of icicles to snatch themselves from the wave and launch themselves to the part of the roof the figure was sprinting towards, quickly sealing off the chosen route.

It was a dangerous manoeuvre, Katara knew; out here, beneath the sun, as it was reaching the top-most part of its daily journey _just_ before it started to dive down towards the horizon in the afternoon, Azula would be at the height of her fire-bearing powers. Katara meanwhile, was limited to the water she would either pull from the air or snatch from the fountain, or possibly even the brittle twig-like structures of ivy that continued to crawl over the walls. And all that, she was keenly aware of, would soon be dwalfed by the almost endless sheets of flame Azula could summon before the former princess tired. She should be fleeing, to the canal, or back to the palace where there would be people, who, though they were not quite sure what to make of her, would still want to help preserve her life. Probably.

On the other hand, there was no guarantee that Azula would be goaded into following her into such an obvious trap.

Katara let the wave carry her round in a curve, sweeping in front of the icicles that had embedded themselves into the roof - no point in running away from another source of water after all - and placed her hands in her hips as she let the wave fall with a splash. She took grim satisfaction in the face Azula made as the liquid touched her shoes.

'Azula,' she spat, 'what are you doing here?!'

Azula glanced at her, an amused, patronising smile curling her mouth and Katara felt a shiver travel down through her, right to her toes. There was no trace of that fevered madness in her eyes, or if it was there, it was carefully hidden. In fact, the calm way Azula held herself, steady, with no unnecessary leaning to the side, all of her weight perfectly balanced and centred, in a way Katara had almost forgotten Azula was capable of doing, spoke of an obvious danger.

'My, my, how rude.'

Katara felt another shudder shake at her guts as Azula spoke. There was a careful drawl to her voice, a calculated enunciation to the words. Another throwback to the old Azula.

'But then what else could I expect from a peasant?'

Katara knew she shouldn't goad Azula. So she simply said: 'That doesn't answer my question.' And then because she couldn't seem to help herself, she added: 'besides; it was hardly _polite_ to attack me suddenly out of nowhere, in the first place.'

Azula scoffed. 'You dodged, didn't you? You wouldn't be worth much if you couldn't even do that.' She tilted her head to the side. 'Still. I suppose you have _some_ manners. Ty Lee would have been squeaking about the state of my hair by now. Or perhaps just simply squeaking. She always was a coward when it came to me.'

'Your hair's certainly neater than the last time I saw it,' Katara ventured, carefully arranging her hands into a fighting stance, palms open and flat and ready to curve, quick as knives, into the next position. She felt disgruntled as she saw Azula refuse to do the same. 'But you shouldn't insult your old...minions like that. Ty Lee's brave when it matters. _You_ of _all_ of people should know that.'

Azula bared her teeth, an ugly expression of hate snapping into place on her face. 'Oh yes, I know all too _easily_ how quickly people betray each other. Father betrayed me when he could have changed the course of history, by having someone at his side when the final battle of the war came. Zuko betrayed me by picking people other than his family to fight for. And so did the people I gave the honour of being my friends to.' She tossed her head. 'And you of course, peasant, understand betrayal all too well. It was only a few months with the Avatar before you decided you were done with him, and chose to climb the social ranks by being as sweet as honey to my brother!'

Katara screwed her face up. 'You're being a lot more diplomatic about the subject than other people I could think of.'

Now wasn't that a discomforting thought.

The anger mostly faded from Azula's face at that, allowing her to smile again, though a healthy portion of it remained in her eyes, making them gleam a nasty gold.

'Who Zuko brings into his bedchamber is up to him. It's been made pretty clear to me that I have no say in who's going to be siring or bearing the next heir to the throne. Besides-' and here Azula lowered her gaze as though the ground held far more interest than the space Katara's body occupied. But Katara wasn't fooled; there was still that horrible smile curving her lips as she spoke, a smile that fell into her eyes and made them look cool and superior even as they were lowered from her. It was as though Katara was unworthy of being looked at, or at least that's how it felt. But then Azula had always had masterful body language.

'-I imagine it would probably be impossible to use your _healing_ abilities-' and here Azula gave the word some bite, as though it were described something truly disgusting, like Katara used her salvia instead of water in her customary scan of body parts each time she fell into the role of doctor. '-or at least difficult to do so when giving birth. And with no one else around to admonish the same life-giving powers, you may well die. I'm sure our family physicians won't be too well acquainted with the body of barbarian and how they differ from our own.'

Katara saw red at that. It was stupid and impulsive and a part of her knew it, but still, before her brain had fully caught up with the movement of her body, her arms flung themselves out again with a knife-like curve through the air. The water streaked towards Azula like a bullet at her command, with more of a slamming force to its motion than the elegance of a water-whip, but the other girl simply spun round into a kick, allowing a sweep of blue flame to disperse the onslaught of liquid before it could even touch her. Katara didn't stop; she twirled, her arms whipping above her head like the branches of a tree in a storm, her breath puffing out wide and heavy as the steam from the evaporated water condensed, sweeping out over Azula in a roll of mist. Katara's fingers then tightened and curled like claws, into tight fists, and the mist solidified, forming white streaks over Azula's limbs and clothes, even coating her eyelashes with fine white icicles. It spread like veins that had been slashed open and Azula stumbled for a few seconds, the cold clinging to her clothes and her face, before her eyes lit up and she breathed out low and heavy, the ice evaporating instantly at the touch of warm air.

But Katara was already running forward, more water curling round her, journeying up from the fountain to the top of the building and then sliding round her arm before it punched out from her hand, becoming a thick heavy battering ram towards Azula's chest. With a smirk, Azula stepped slightly to the side to avert the force somewhat and then _allowed_ the water to push her off the building. Katara didn't pause to think why that might be so as she hurried forward, arms coming together so the water rolled under her and swept her off the roof after Azula in a graceful curl. Katara's arms spread again, ducking and diving into tight triangular motions as the water swept out round Azula, carrying them both down before gravity caught them and smashed them into the ground. And then her fingers curled once again and suddenly Azula's body was wrapped in a barrel of firm ice.

Azula smiled. 'Always the hero, hmm? Must be addicting, being the Avatar's groupie. I can relate; I've formed a group of my own, after all.'

Katara felt unease at the statement, felt the prickle of cold awareness as she heard the thud of boots nearby and experianced the instinctive sensation of another human being nearby, running full-tilt towards her. She was starting to turn, feet almost on the ground, when something thudded into her side, knocking her out of her self-made ramp of water and Katara fell, rolling into some clay jars and letting out a cry as the shattered pieces pierced her arms and scraped long gashes of blood through her skin. She rolled some more, water raining down around her, over her, as it slipped from her control for a few vital seconds and then a shadow passed over her head. Katara could feel it, the pricking awareness in the back of her skull that told her something, no, someone was leaning over her. With a gasp she rolled over, just in time to watch Azula's boot slam into her face.

And then everything went dark.

* * *

Katara woke to more darkness. She groaned, and winced as pain rolled through her, as it suddenly became violent and ugly, forcing a cry from her throat as it ripped down from her torn and battered arms and into her brain. Katara froze, tasting dust and dirt on her tongue, her forehead knocked against the ground as though she were forced to bow. Something was wrong.

She tilted her head to the side, as far as she dared, and saw small stones roll into her vision, tiny pebbles scattered over the ground, as though to mock her. There was a wall, not ten paces away, and an old broken stool nursed against some equally broken bowls and bottles. She was in the stock room of some run-down bar, or so she summised.

She groaned, carefully tried to roll herself over and couldn't hold back the keening cry that reared up from her throat again. It was like glass was poking up through the spokes of bones in her arms, jostling against the nerves.

There was motion to her side, a shuffling, and Katara froze as she heard a door swing open.

'Huh,' said the new voice, and Katara felt a grudging sort of relief that it wasn't Azula's. 'You're awake.'

Boots crossed into her vision, over the loose litter of stones, and, as gently as she dared, Katara leaned back. 'Who are you?' she gasped out.

'I wouldn't move around too much,' came her non-answer. 'I broke your arms pretty good.'

Katara felt a strong stab of fear at that, fear, and an overwhelming rush of horror. She couldn't bend, she thought to herself with a sick surge of dizziness. She couldn't bend!

'I did it when Miss Bossy wasn't watching of course; she thought you just needed some chi blockers to do the trick. But I knew better. I could tell from the way you moved that you wouldn't stay down, once you were up. Not for nothing.'

Katara swallowed down another sick rush of fear and licked her lips. Her throat was parched. 'Are you one of the...inmates Azula freed?' she asked carefully. If they didn't want to give her a name, perhaps they would give her that much. She and Zuko were both aware than Azula had sprung free some of her fellow inmates at the asylm she had temporarily made her home, what with the whole Kurigage thing that had happened months back. 'And...if my arms are really as broken as you say they are then...would you mind getting me something to drink? I could hardly bend at you right now anyway...'

At that point, she would even tolerate some of that Earth Kingdom ale Sokka had become so fond of recently.

A low snigger then. As though she were trying to be funny. 'You're cute. Tryin' to be all stonic. But you're no Toph.'

The boots walked away from her and after a brief, forebearing pauses, the door slammed shut with a finality that rattled her bones.

Katara grimaced. Because she had learnt two things. One, Azula wasn't fully in control of her ally, one who seemed to be allegic to giving her name or occupation. And two; she was indeed no Toph. No witty remarks crept into her head, no smart comments, or threats to yell after the closed door. No, instead she closed her eyes and concentrated.

Because Toph couldn't heal. But Katara could.

Free from the usual ease of motion she had, imprisoned with a body that couldn't not perform the sweeping slide and pull Katara sometimes used when running hands over a body, frequently not her own, Katara was forced to go back to the rudimentary, instinctive basics. She remembered how she had pulled the water into her hands, made them glow, when Aang had burnt then. She had done it as more a reflex than anything else.

But she was more experienced now; she felt the blood in her arms, the way little vessels spilt and crept into the fissures of her muscles and the shrapnel of her bones. The break hadn't been clean. She felt parts of her splintered, small knobs of bone stuck in places they should never touch. Katara focused. She could not move bone. She could only coax the chi to move into certain places, to shift and push various parts of her body back into the place they needed to be. She had no outside sources of water, just the blood that swirled and flowed through her broken bones, that would not obey her without the pull of the full moon. And perhaps, those stray bits of moisture she could rip from the air. But she needed her fingers for that.

Katara bit down into the dirt, into the dust, to choke down her cries as she painstaking jerked her fingers, as she curled them millimetre by millimetre and made a few dewdrops of water suddenly glisten and sparkle on her arms where before there had been nothing. It took effort, monumental effort, but Katara repeated the process. Her teeth sawed into the floor, into the harsh grit that soaked up all the moisture in her mouth, but again and again, her fingers waggled, to make more water dance and bead against her skin. Then Katara's brow furrowed even harder, and she focused on those pinpricks of wetness on her skin, coaxed them down, to be absorbed into her flesh, to thread their way into her muscles and round the torn shape of her bones.

Katara had been a seamstress for many years, had patched together cloaks of blue cloth and white fur as snowstorms raged outside. Her travels with Aang had been easier, the robes they had stripped down to in the warmer climates of the world, running thinner, and being far easier to slip a needle and thread through. The work she was doing now called for the same precision, the same careful attention to detail.

Her bones shifted, ran into their old original shapes, splintered pieces of them nudged into position by the careful push and thud of chi. Katara's brow tightened. She could not see it, but she could feel the glow of her healing abilities at work.

Don't faint, she thought, as she gave her arms an experimental tug and felt no surge of searing pan in response. Don't faint, she thought again as she rolled up onto her knees and gingerly stood. And swayed. She clutched at the wall, forced her way to the door. Stood and breathed, slow and heavy. There were no windows to try and kick her way out. Just a solid wooden door. She would need more than tendrils of water she could snip out of the air to break it down; and she could sense no larger sources of water nearby. Of course not. Azula and her cronies were probably too clever for that.

Katara leant against the side of the wall. Rolled down into a slouch. And much against her will and furious thoughts, found herself drifting.


	12. Over-shadowed, under a drape

She had no real idea of how long she drifted, of how long she felt herself fall into the long, dark bored drawl of hours. Her arms still didn't feel totally right, but she supposed she would need to be near a proper source of water to fine tune her work. But she was alive and here. So obviously Azula wanted her for something.

She was jolted into awareness suddenly of the door slamming open and Azula strolling in, head held rigid and high, the way she used to before she went..well...crazy. But there was only a dim taint of that crazed glee in her eyes as her head swept round and found Katara.

Katara for her part, tried hard not to make it look so obvious she was exhausted. She clambered and rocked her way back into a standing position, her arms like wooden soldiers at her side. Azula saw that and frowned.

'Your arms don't look to be too good, do they?' She said it with a conversational air, as though she knew all about it, but still, Katara saw something sweep across that analytical gaze, something ugly. It looked a little like surprise. 'I wouldn't try anything stupid, if I were you. I know it's hard because you're a peasant, but I know even animals are smart enough to avoid pain if they can help it...so do try to at least be as clever as them, hmm?'

Katara really wanted to water-ship her into the wall. Instead she ran tongue over her dry lips. 'You should really show your followers who's boss,' she croaked out. 'Otherwise they'll only keep pressing their luck, and finding more things to break without your permission. You can hurt me all you want, but I'm sure if it was you who chose to break my arms, you would want to gloat more about it.'

Azula narrowed her eyes and gave her a savage smile. 'Oh, the peasant thinks she's all clever now? That's so...quaint.' She slammed her hand into Katara's should then, hard, and Katara couldn't help the strangled cry that escaped her. 'It seemed to have healed up rather nicely, considering the fact that you claimed they were broken.'

Katara's other hand scrambled up over Azula's arm like a spider, grasped at Azula's cunning, long nailed fingers and tried to ease the pressure digging into the ball of her shoulder. 'I once brought the Avatar back to life after you hurled lightening at him,' she gasped, carefully side-stepping the fact that she had special water from the spirit oasis to aid at the time; what Azula didn't know was probably stuff Katara needed her to remain ignorant about, after all. 'What makes you think I can't straighten out a few bones?'

Azula let out a thoughtful hum and released her, smirking as Katara choked and fell back against the wall, fingers smoothing over her bruised shoulder.

'You haven't got to the main part yet, Azula,' she said, trying to drive the fear down, and not entirely succeeding if the growing smirk on Azula's face was anything to go by. 'Why am I here?'

Azula spun, presenting the slender back of herself to Katara as though she saw her as no threat at all. It smarted more than Katara expected it to. 'Oh, I'm simply looking out for my brother's interests, that's all. Him shacking up a water tribe peasant is all rather amusing, but it is stirring up the waggling tongues in the older, stiffer crowd of the Fire Nation nobility, and I'm sorry to say this, but I think you're having a rather negative impact on his image.' Her fingers flicked up, to sweep aside a long line of hair that lay across her face, the gesture so at odds with the unapologetic tone of her voice, so sickly sweet, like honey that had expired and ran sour after being left exposed to the air too long. Azula then paused, and said softly, dangerously. 'I'm sure you and Zu-zu are so sickingly sweet together, nursing all his bruised feelings, but I don't feel as though letting you stay by his side is for the best.' She spun round and ran a haunty look over the flop of Katara's body, as the other girl breathed against the wall. 'If you were his private doctor, or simply some sort of concubine, that would be one thing. But no; Zu-zu is all noble and lets himself get led around by his feelings, he'll want to marry you and make it all very by-the-book and law-abiding. I'm not sure it wouldn't start a riot. And I want my brother to stay on the throne, you see.' She crept closer, eyes alight. 'Maybe you could be good for him. Too good. Zuko loves his country, no matter what strange things he does to it. But I think he could also damage it too, a little, if it was to keep you safe inside it.'

Katara swallowed. She didn't have a ready reply on her tongue, another than the cliché 'you're insane.' But for reasons better left unvoiced, she had a feeling that wouldn't go down too well.

'So I'm a...what?' she asked, after the silence pressed in on her too long. 'A hostage? I don't see what good that'll do. Not if you truly don't want the throne like you keep claiming you don't.'

Azula looked at her. Then opened her mouth. But before she could say anything, the wall exploded. And a dragon snout rammed its way through.

Hair whipping over her face, and arms raised in a wonky shield, Katara's eyes blinked through the whirl of sudden wind and hungrily drank down the rustic red colour of the dragon's scales. Those gold eyes scoured the room, scoured her, as sunlight fell and slapped against the scattered pieces of pottery and the snapped-off legs of the disused stool. And-

'Katara!'

Zuko tumbled out, a rush of red and brown robes from the white hair that erupted from a over the dragon's horns. There was fury on his face, mapped out by the aching blue of the sky the raising of the dragon's head helded pushed forth into the wrecked corner of the room and Katara stumbled, half towards it and him both, before Azula whirled round and sent her slamming into the ground with a strong kick.

Ouch, Katara though as she heard Zuko call her name again, with a distinct air of anger brushing into each syllable. She was getting a little tired of getting knocked down today, and by Azula of all people.

'Leave her alone Azula!'

'You found us Zu-zu! Well done! Of course, I would be more impressed if we hadn't had a big blue dragon fly us out here, in clear sight of the gawping townfolk.'

'Enough games, Azula! You obviously wanted me here, so talk!'

'Well, I'm hardly going to keep doing that if you keep throwing fire at me now, am I? Has she really made you so uncivilised, brother?'

The room stopped weaving in front of Katara's eyes, though the spurts of violent colour, of tearing flames of red and blue and their swirling heat, kept dancing round the room, Zuko attempting to whirl between her and Azula. But Azula was light on her toes, almost airbender-light as she bounced off against a wall and sawed Zuko's newest crescent-moon shaped slice of flame in half. She grabbed the trailing ends of it in her fists, before throwing the flickering arcs back over her head, and twisting the orange flames into blue before swinging them out into a highly stylised whip. Zuko caught it without pause, letting the ends lasso round his wrists and stroke the skin there as he diverted the flames from burning him with a few subtle rolls of his hand. Katara blinked at the strange almost waterbender like quality of the movement, before he spun, fire flaring round him as he dragged Azula forwards with both her own whip and his own momentum. It was a trick Katara had seen many different waterbenders use against each other when their arms were coated with water, but it looked more striking, and conversely, more fragile, when the limbs were surrounded by the weaving dance of flames instead.

Katara grimaced, tried to push herself up, and then winced, as her throat met the cool, sharp side of a knife. 'Don't. Move,' a familiar voice spoke in her ear, and Katara shuddered as her old torturer's hand fastened over a spare wrist. 'You too!' the voice rose up and called out. 'Both of you!'

Zuko froze, horror in his stance, and Azula whirled, eyes turning up a thin snake-like stare. 'Tona,' she said softly, a dangerous tone lacing her voice. 'What _do_ you think you're doing?'

Tona let out a laugh. 'Correcting your mistake, your _highness._ And the sad part is? I wanted to believe in you, I really did. But I heard you just now – you're content to sit by and let your brother _stay_ on the throne. The one who lets the Avatar waltz freely into our country!'

Katara tried not to do anything, not even swallow. Th knife was there, steel nicking her throat at every shallow breath.

'We used to go pretty freely into other nations,' Zuko said, his voice and hands lowering slowly, very slowing. He attempted a smile, a wobbly one. _Look at me,_ his earnest eyes seemed to say. _I'm no threat_. 'We used to shove out way in. But the Avatar has an invitation. He isn't forcing anyone in the Fire Nation to do anything they don't want to do.'

Tona laughed bitterly. 'He should have never come back! If he had just stayed dead, my brothers would still be here!' Her face swung round, eyes glaring into Katara's and when she spoke, her voice was filed with hate. 'Not that you care, oh no. When my oldest brother took his life, because the shame of being caught with that conspirator, that sage Shyu, cast our family's loyalty in doubt, did you care? Oh no, the Avatar just leaves behind the people who help him, especially if they're Fire Nation, even when it hurts the innocent bystanders! Hell, he takes it further, lets some giant ugly spirit invade him and batter ships against the rocks at the North Pole! My second brother was no innocent, he was a soldier through and through, but tell me this Water Tribe Girl!' the knife trembled at Katara's throat, digging in, just enough to cause blood to well up against the metal. 'Why did he decide the Fire Lord, the one he should hate the most, deserved to live? Why did he decide the lower classes should die in his place months beforehand?'

Azula snorted contempously. 'Wow. Even my brother, when he was being truly pathetic, was never weak enough to take his own life.'

Tona let out a grunt and with one shove, ripped the knife through Katara's throat.

Things spun for a moment, the silence deafening. Katara felt her lungs burn, felt a horrible loose feeling in her neck, as her fingers came up to claw at the gap in her throat and she choked and gargled, slipping to the floor. Blood swept over her hands and across her robes, a river of red bleeding into the blue and turning it a brownish purple. And all she could think was, _oh no. Oh Spirits. Tui…La…this isn't, isn't…Mom…is this what you felt? It's horrible._

It was less than a second, must have been, but all those words, pauses and all, swept through her before she reached the floor and time restarted again.

And in the background, Zuko let out a loud desperate 'NO' a mirror to the very one he had yelled out over a year ago before he dove in front of her and took Azula's lightening to his heart. Indeed, Katara could see him stretched out towards her, not a trace of anger in his face, just a desperate fear that took hold of her heart and seized it. And then he was then, fingers slipping over her shoulders and holding her steady as he heaved her into his lap. Katara crumbled into him, head banging against his neck, weak, decompressing sounds coming from the hole beneath her mouth. She couldn't speak, only choke, and already the room was growing dark.

There had been many times Katara through she could die, many times when she thought she would, but she couldn't remember the last time she had been so panicked, so unable to make her bending obey her. The flow of chi within her was sluggish, even more so with the strain of her newly healed arms, and her fingers kept flinching away from the gaping maw of her throat, kept fumbling over the water they tried to draw out of the fountain of blood that erupted between them. Zuko's hand foolishly came up to nestle over the weak struggling spurts of said fingers, as though he could stem the flow of blood with the motion of it all, their hands jumbling together to form a net, slippery and wet with the slick blood that pumped and crawled through the thin spaces where their flesh met.

Then abruptly, Zuko's hand ripped away from hers, the panic in his eyes hardening slightly as Tona crept back into their space, the knife in her hand plunging downwards once again. It dived towards Zuko's head and his fingers swept up and caught it, the sheer heat emulating from it causing the metal to twist and snap at their touch. Up his fingers reared once more, diving like a snake to tangle round the wrist of the assailant nearby. Tona screamed, her skin twisted into an ugly red burn, her skin blistering at Zuko's touch as he drew her down hard and fast against the ground.

 _Don't kill her,_ Katara thought sleepily, still trying to clumsily work her healing magic. _Don't. Don't be like Yon Rha. Don't sink down to his level._ She watched, spots in her vision as Zuko's hand left Tona's smoking wrist, as it danced over Tona's scalp, lighting burning some of her hair, before it gripped it and slammed her head against the ground, hard. Tona slumped forwards and did not get up again.

Soft footfalls, ones Katara couldn't barely recognise and then Zuko's hand reared up again in front of her, flame spilling over his palm.

'Keep away from us!'

'She's dying Zu-zu.' Azula said this calmly, as though observing the weather, and yet, through her blinkered vision, Azula's face turning rosy under the flare of light from Zuko's flame, Katara thought she saw a strange kind of quiet pity in those eyes. Viper-python eyes, she told herself and tried to hack in another breath through a throat that wouldn't close.

But it hurt. _It hurt._ Just to move, to work, without breath spilling into her lungs.

'Shut up! I'm not having you near her just so you can help her die faster!' Zuko stared down at her and Katara could see horror in his gaze as he looked. At her. 'Don't give up! You've brought so many people back, you've brought _me_ back, so I know you can do the same for yourself!'

I couldn't bring Jet back, she thought. And the only holes inside him were the ones that didn't show. I can't even feel my fingers...

There was a wet thump and Katara barely moved as her arm fell against the curl of Zuko's leg, the back of her hand slapping down against the wet puddle of her blood.

'No,' Zuko told her, his hand seizing her smaller, colder one, pain flashing through his face at how the temperature matched a stone rather than his own. 'Don't even think about it!' he bunched her hand up over her throat.

'I can try something, if you like,' said Azula, her cool eyes appraising them.

Shadows fell forward over Katara, as Zuko leaned forward, all of him bunched tightly over Katara, hand tightening over the gap between her shoulder and head, supporting her neck and trying to limit the blood seeping out.

'Stay away from her!' he spat out. 'You've done enough! If it wasn't for you-'

'-She wouldn't be dying on the floor, yes, I know,' his sister cut in ruthlessly. 'But since she is, what have you got to lose?'

She stepped forward. Leant down. And amazingly enough, knelt down, with only a faint wrinkle appearing on her brow as Katara's blood met her knees. Zuko's hand, the one cradling the flame, drew back a little, wavering. But the fact that he hadn't driven Azula off with a single flare of fire, spoke volumes. 'You try anything, give me a ** _single_** reason to think you'll-'

'Please Zu-zu, Dad was much scarier,' Azula said smoothly. And then her hands came up, gentle, rather than searing heat emulating from them. They wove carefully over Katara's form, pulling her awareness back to her own body with a jolt; with no little surprise she fell her chi flare up, despite her thin pulse, feel something strong and fierce and ruthless sweep into her at the pull and pushing curl of the flames which danced above her head. Groggily, Katara gripped hold of the feeling, of this new strength Azula's motions seemed to pour into her. It was like being yanked awake suddenly and abruptly. She couldn't work out where this energy was coming from, whatever it was the heat from the flames being converted and resettled into her chi, or some kind of spiritual transition taking place, but then she wasn't a firebender.

And with a great effort, Katara forced her chi into her throat, yanked water out of her blood, and pushed the tattered flames of skin together. She lost track of Zuko's hands nursing her on his lap, on the warm curl of him pressed in close. There was only her and the pound of her ever-slowing heart. She couldn't see the way silvery moisture drifted up out of the red liquid spilled onto the floor, the way the red faded into transparency as the newly-formed water drifting through the air to her wound. It was only as she felt the first flutter of oxygen wheeze down her battered throat and refuse to escape to anyplace other than her lungs that she felt hope touch her.

Water, chi, all came together, knitting her flesh into a scared tumble that worked to keep her throat intact. In a matter of seconds Katara was breathing, feeling warmer.

And above her was Azula's smirk, Zuko's smile, as they danced before her vision in a blur before steadying gradually.

She paused and concentrated on the movement of her throat, each swallow of her breath, as her fingers shuddered and lay still over her blood-slicked throat. No gaping hole was there to greet their touch, nothing to slide away out of their tips, and Katara kept breathing, kept pushing the air in and re-finding the same old rhythm that usually she didn't have to think about in order to perform with.

In. And out. Push. And pull.

In and out. Push and pull.

In. out. Push. Pull.

And then, feeling significantly stronger, Katara's hand drifted up, found the crisp clear line of her lover's mouth and drifted up to cradle his cheek in much the same way his arms were now bracketing the curve of her neck and waist. She smiled up at his relief and remembered another time, when their positions had been reversed, when he had smiled up at her, on the cusp of death after taking lightning to the heart.

'Thank you, Katara.' He had croaked at her, back then.

And in return, she had told him,'actually, I think I should be the one thanking you,' as quiet tears snuck down her face.

Quiet tears that were now mirrored on his face, trickling from his eyes, that she successfully caught on the edge of her trembling fingers, before weakly wiping them away.

'Should I be thanking myself this time?' she rasped, unsure if his memory would get the joke.

But he simply looked down at her. And smiled weakly yet again, though he held far more strength in his body than she did in that particular moment of time.

'No,' he said. 'I should still be the one thanking you.'

And Azula promptly snorted, thoroughly ruining the moment.

Zuko head instantly snapped up at the sound, a glare rapidly taking over his face. He looked disgruntle, as the newly-born relief flashed in his eyes and hardened into stone at Azula's surly glance. Jaw tensing, his grip on Katara's waist tightened. Slowly, his other hand fell away from her neck, as he leaned forward cautiously, so her head could drop into his chest.

'Thank you, Azula,' he said. The words didn't sound as though they'd been sent through gritted teeth, but they were missing the graceful ease of rhythm they fell into when he said thank you to anyone else on the planet. 'But we both know, that if it hadn't been for you, Katara wouldn't have needed your help in the first place.'

Azula tilted her head to the side, deceptively coy, like a cat. 'Oh? Aren't you interested, brother? In my new…abilities.'

A small white flame danced in her palm, flickering there with a gentle heat. It looked, to Katara's recovering eyes, like the pale glossumer wings of a butterfly, as it opened and closed them slowly, on the perch of a spread-open flower. She grimaced internally. There must be something wrong with her.

'Why?' asked Zuko carefully. 'I doubt you want to set up a school and teach the general public. Much less teach me.'

Katara felt his hands shift, move more stutly round her levenging her into position.

Azula's eyes narrowed. Then the fame on her palm, because less a flower and move of a knife flaring up into a sharp narrow blue. Her hand came slicing down towards Katara's head.

And the world turned over, rolled, the ceiling and walls spinning and crashing together as Zuko threw himself backwards, dragging Katara with him. Heat in the form of a large wall of fire, erupted between him and Azula as his legs kicked it up into being, and Katara gasped as the dizzying colour raced away in front of her. With another gasp she saw Azula cleave her way through the flames, her hands positioned together like the head of an arrow, determination in her gait. Then Katara's vision was torn from the princess, Zuko's arms coiled round her tightly as scales surrounded them both. With a roar, the dragon Zuko had brought with him, poured itself into the building more firmly, bricks and timber shattering in its wake. Zuko griped it's back with one firm hand towing Katara up onto the crescent-like saw of scales along it's serpentine neck.

'I've let you run wild too long, Azula!' he yelled out. 'Slip away if you can!'

Azula eyed the dragon as it bleached smoke in her face, as it's tail whipped round to trap her. She dodged nimbly, before a knife scraped by the side of her face, the tell-tale glint of it's steel disguised by the roll of smoke.

'So dramatic,' Mai said drolly, not even bothering to step out into the light. 'Both of you. Whatever. Guess it's left up to the _boring_ people like me, to clear up the mess.'

Azula's face twitched. 'Mai, what a pleasant surprise-'

She stopped as she attempted to pull herself into a proper stance. But her leg jerked forward and her wrists trembled. Her mouth dropped open, a shaken gasp escaping it. 'You…'

Traitor, her face seemed to scream out at Mai as she dropped like a stone. Katara was shocked to even see it.

Mai sighed, as though unlike Katara she wasn't surprised by that at all. And then she stalked forward to retrieve her knife, the edge dripping, Katara now noticed, with a transparent liquid that gleamed. 'Luckily I decided to baby-sit Zuko out of my own volition. Dropping down onto another roof a few streets away before he decided to trust that overgrown lizard to crash through someone's actual house, turned out to be the _reasonable_ choice. Who would have guessed.'

Katara swallowed.

'How'd you find me? And when-' she glared at Zuko, 'did you get an actual dragon!'

Zuko had the grace to look embarrassed. 'He sort of showed up. And…well. Things like that never show up without a reason. I figured it was a good idea to trust it knew what it was doing.' The dragon cast him a grumpy look over its shoulder at him as if it knew what 'it' meant and was not amused.

'Right,' said Katara faintly. 'Of course. You and Aang and animals…never ceases to amaze me…'

Zuko looked at her in concern, letting a few fingers stroke softly over her forehead. 'I think you should rest now,' he told her.

Katara blinked. 'Yes,' she managed.

* * *

The ride back was uneventful mostly because Katara couldn't really remember much of it. What she did remember was the feeling of warmth and strength, steady at her back, and the softness of a rich red clock, with the cold clasp and curving shine of a gold pin shaped like a flame holding it together under her chin. Repetitive swaying as a dragon flowed through the sky between her thighs like a river. Mai had probably been polishing her knife somewhere along the contours of its back, and Azula had probably been plotting devious…err plots from where she ended up trussed up like one of Sokka's animals carcasses that he had hunted down. And Zuko…Zuko had been behind her, keeping her steady. The sky, she remembered, had been blue, passing into purple then pink, the grainy colour that you saw rubbed into certain paintings, with the golden sun filleting the creases in her robe with shimmering lines and slopes of blossoming orange that appeared to be woven into the scarlet thread. But it was nothing compared to the warmth of Zuko behind her, a solid weight eclipsing even the majesty of said sun.

Katara had breathed, his arms nursed around her body, keeping her upright and alive. And then she had fallen asleep.


	13. Sprang free into the wild

She woke to a crimson darkness, the long spill of the bed's canopy arching over her head. Eyes darting round, she saw the familiar blue of the Water Tribe items littering her room and relaxed at the sight...only to abruptly re-tense as there was a gasp from the corner, and a sudden flash of brown and red launching itself back from the side of her bed. Katara attempted to swivel round to follow it, the covers trapped over and around her arms as her senses urgently flared out for water. In a split-second, her eyes were being drawn to the crystallized jug on her bed-stand, and then she realised that the only source of the travelling brown and red had been the arms from a serving girl that sometimes darted into her bedroom to brush dusting rags over the edges of items in her room.

'I can clean up after myself you know!' she remembered informing Zuko crossly once, okay, _maybe_ twice before. 'I've been cleaning up after everyone my entire life, I don't need another person to start picking up the non-existent slack now!'

Zuko had stared back at her, wide-eyed, unsure of how to respond. He had just come back from a negotiation with some eastern nobles and was still coated with heavy, formal-looking robes, his hair drawn back from his face with a neat, elegant hair pin. It made him look awfully young, in a way the shaggy fall of his hair, when it was fully released, usually didn't. For some stupid reason, it often put Katara in mind of Sokka, and the way his eyes would lift guiltily, the entire expression of nervousness on his face left open and clear thanks to the way his hair was pulled back and trapped inside his warrior's wolftail.

'Um…' Zuko had finally said, that familar uncertainly well and present on his face. His eyes had refused to move away from hers, though. 'I don't…well…' Each word came out tentative and unsure. 'I can't tell the servants not to do their jobs!' he finally settled on. 'They get paid for them, and yeah, I get how it must seem…lazy to other people-'

'Oh really?' Katara broke in angrily, hands on hips. ''Other people?' Like me you mean!'

Zuko's head had dropped, his hand reaching up to rub tiredly against his closed eye. 'You can clean your own room however you like, Katara. And I can tell the servants to stay out of it if you really want that. I'm sure some of them will be happy to leave you alone. But they'll talk. Some of them will, anyway. And I don't want to give people anymore reason to gossip behind your back. _Our_ backs.'

Katara had opened her mouth, a retort sitting heavily on her tongue. Then after a moment, she had swallowed it down, her mouth shutting with a sutle snap. 'I…' she said heavily, hands dropping from her hips. 'I'm sorry, Zuko. You're right. I'm not as mad about it as well, other things. Truthfully, it _is_ nice not to have to care how messy I am, or having to rush round tidying up after myself and other people. But then, after a while, I feel guilty, because I've been doing it for so long, and in the past when I tried to take a break, Sokkka would do something stupid or accidently create more work for me, and I would just think, 'if I hadn't stopped, there wouldn't have been this much more of a mess to clean up now!''

Zuko had then lifted his head, a wry smile perched on his lips. 'Misplaced guilt? Yeah, I get how that feels sometimes. But trust me Katara, I have far more of it than you do. And it's well-deserved.'

Katara had bit her lip, softening despite herself. Because what was she doing? Her anger felt so silly and small, like the worry of a little girl compared to what Zuko had to struggle with, and the loyalists he had to break through to.

As though he could read her mind, he smiled even wider. 'I mean, hey, if you really want more cleaning to do, you could always come to my room more often, I'm sure there's plenty there to keep you occupied with your um, time and…' he trailed off, flushing as Katara's mouth dropped open again, eyes wide. 'That, um, didn't come out the way I intended,' he said in a very, very small voice.

Katara had simply raised an eyebrow, feeling crafty all of a sudden. 'Oh?' she said, relishing the look of panic on his face. 'Is that so? You want me picking up after you?' Then taking pity on him, she had slid her arm against his and knocked her mouth against his own rapidly opening one. What had followed had been warm and relished, heavy and wet, with the odd slurp or two. And Katara had discovered that it was quite freeing to ruffle Zuko's robes quite thoroughly, especially if she didn't have to be the one to straighten them out again.

Now, locked back in the present day and the accompanying swirl of pain in her neck, Katara closed her eyes again, before blinking rapidly, sleep clearing from her groggy eyes. Of course, right now, she was the one in need of straightening out.

'Suzu?' she asked, her voice a weak, quivering whisper. 'Is that you?'

Suzu, a wide-eyed girl only months younger than her, stepped back into the light, eyes wide and sacred.

'Y-yes, I'm so sorry for jumping like that!' Hurriedly, her fingers barely escaping her sleeves, Suzu reached out and tilted the jug so a steady stream of water dropped into the cup waiting beside it. Then, in a flurry of nervous motion, she pressed the glass into Katara's shaking fingers, helping her to hold it close as Katara swallowed the liquid down in huge, shaking gulps.

'Thank you,' Katara managed, after ripping her lips away from the cup with a wet gasp. 'I'm probably going to need a bit more though.'

Suzu bowed and rapidly disappeared into the gloom. 'I'll tell Lord Zuko you're awake,' she muttered once she was perched on the threshold of the door, eyes gladly seeking out the adjoining corridor.

Katara sighed. Suzu had always been jumpy of her, mostly because she was related to some of the villagers who had been imprisoned by Hama once upon a time, and thus had heard how terrifying bloodbending could be straight from their traumatised mouths. She was constantly flinching whenever she saw any use of waterbending, no matter how innocent, and had steadfastly refused any offers Katara had made to her of to heal the odd rash the crawled its way over her leg, to creep up like a long pink vine to rest under her knee.

Deep down, Katara didn't blame her. Once she had been as nervous as Suzu herself, at least in regard to firebending. It had taken meeting Aang to finally start learning how brave she could truly be.

But for now she rested, water dripping over her lips, until Zuko burst in in a dramatic flare of motion.

'Katara!' he exclaimed, robes slightly askew in his hurry, as he rushed to her side, his eyes wide and glad, though stress, Katara noted, was still rooted into the faint lines that remained buried into his brow. She craned her head back to watch him freeze over her comically, hands hovering as though he fearing breaking her with a simple touch. 'I'm…so sorry I wasn't here when you woke,' he continued brokenly, ' I just-'

'Had Azula to take care of, I know,' Katara interrupted with a tired voice. 'Trust me, I get it. In fact I would have been angry with you if you didn't prioritise keeping her locked up.'

Zuko sighed, relief flowing into his face as his shoulders slumped. 'I'm not looking forward to mediating between her and my mother,' he muttered, finally daring to reach out and let a finger land against the round bump of Katara's cheek.

Katara managed a wavering smile, the line of it feeling weird under the pressure of his gentle finger. Perhaps it was even helping to maintain a dimple there, who knew?

It's fine, Zuko,' she said stiffly. 'I'm fine. No thanks to Azula, even if she did…'

She trailed off, confused by her own memory.

And Zuko smiled at her wryly, as though he understood. Perhaps he did; his family was a confused mess, poisoned not only by the years of war propaganda, but by Ozai's narrow dictatorship, abuse, and emotional neglect. Katara didn't fully understand the fragmentary nature of the environment he grew up in, how his mother and uncle could install such vibrant figures of unconditional love and support in his mind, while Azula and his father nursed only darkness, and the odd ray of pity. Perhaps she never would. Her family, while forever broken by Kya's murder, was still resilient, and never had to pay room and board to other such twisted beings.

She was then jolted out of her thoughts by more of Zuko's fingers joining the first, and she softened and lay still as his hand moved up and smoothed over her brow, sweeping sweaty strands of hair back into place. 'It's okay to feel conflicted; so do I. I imagine it's hard for you to feel anything charitable towards her. But it's fine if a tiny bit of you does. She was responsible for you being in that awful, painful position, and I can't forgive her for that; but I know that I'm still grateful that she did some weird firebending healing I've never seen before, all in order to give you an energy boost…as sick as that might sound to other people.'

Katara swallowed. 'It was just enough to get me to save my own life.'

There was an odd pause then.

'Not of course,' Zuko said heavily, 'that it stopped her from attempting to slice your head open the next second, after she helped save your life. You know, after first endangering it.'

Katara wondered if she should tell him that Tona had dislocated her arms, then decided against it. She hated Azula, even if she still felt an odd sort for pity for her, but from what she also recalled from her fuzzily painful memory was that Azula, control freak and general queen of ruthlessness, had been _surprised_ that Tona had taken things that far, instead of simply restraining Katara's movement the old fashioned way using ropes or chains. It was strange, Katara reflected. For all Azula's readiness to jump into performing the killing strike, she never actually seemed to go to the extreme of breaking limbs the way she had heard stories of the odd higher-up officers doing during the war when taking prisoners. Was it a weird form of respect? Or simply because she wanted leverage over her brother and thought hurting Katara too much would be counter-productive to that?

Katara shook herself. It didn't matter. What mattered was making sure Azula never hurt anyone again.

'I want to see her,' she demanded.

Zuko's hand didn't freeze or pause in it's movement. He just offered her a steadfast nod, meeting her eyes as they blazed.

'Of course. But only after you're well enough to stop trembling. No reason to give Azula another treat.'

* * *

It took a week. A week of slurping down softened fruit smoothies with crushed ice she formed with fingers twitches and small-fisted hand motions, ones that made Suzu's eyes widen and her hand tremble slightly as she held the goblet up to Katara's mouth. Katara ignored this, feeling a slight pang that the girl was risking bone-shaking terror in order to keep a simple job, and ruthlessly kept gnawing the persimmon-apples seated in the basket beside her bed, all the way down to the core. She would need to improve her own strength first, before worrying about Suzu's issues. A few days later she could manage to actually eat at a table, an actual table. She clumsily swallowed down the stews and broths brought to her, privately grateful that the spices within had been kept to a mild, smoky taste, instead of the furnace they sometimes stroked it to be in more formal settings.

One night, Zuko glanced over at her and gave her a slightly cocky half-smile.

'Glad the cooks haven't set your mouth on fire this time?' he asked teasingly.

Katara froze, spoon drawn halfway up to her mouth before she glared at him. 'I can handle Fire Nation cooking just fine!' she told him. 'Or have you forgotten that the Aang and the rest of us spent weeks surviving in your country before the Day of Black Sun? None of us starved!'

Zuko's smile transformed into a wide grin. Not quite Sokka-level, Katara thought grimly, but given a few years, it might well be on its way to one.

'I bet the first few times you had dishes similar to this, you made some really awful faces. I'm sorry I missed them.' He paused to take a quick slip of his own broth. A concoction Katara noted sourly, that smelled not only more potent, but richer and more heated. No doubt filled with spices that only bated at his tongue, instead of basting it, the way it might attempt to do with her own. 'Although,' Zuko added after his sip, in a most nonchalant tone of voice, 'Toph was quite happier to re-enact them, the last time she was here.'

Katara was that close to 're-enacting' another right then, in that very moment! Instead she swallowed down the impulse, though not the glare, and flicked a stray tendril of the broth from his spoon onto his sleeve. Not enough to touch the skin and burn it, but a mere whisp of moisture that wouldn't hesitate to stain the seams all the same.

Zuko looked at it with a groan. 'I'm going to get a dirty look for that one from the laundress,' he muttered as Katara smoothly tucked her hair back behind her hair and took a nonchalant sip of her own from her spoon.

'I wouldn't believe everything Toph chooses to create a drama about,' she noted a little meanly. 'She can tell you everything wrong with your posture with her feet. But she can't get _everything_ right about your face. She needs to be really close, to get the finer details. And I know she wasn't sitting close enough at the time to read anything from mine.'

Zuko ginned. 'So you admit you were making faces?'

'Oh, wouldn't you like to know?' Katara said primly. 'Too bad I'm not going to provide a dramatic re-enactment for you.'

Zuko laughed. 'Never mind. We can always create a play of our own.'

And the morning after, when they had done precisely that, Katara clambered out of a rumpled bed, pulling water to herself as she hummed and eased sore muscles into shape, kneading water into the stiff cracks of pain her back encountered. She wandered her way down various corridors afterwards, before pausing to perform a series of small stretches by the turtle duck pond, where she breathed and remembered Koh, remembered stumbling round in the dark and controlling his chi with nothing more than water and the gritted determination of her own. It had felt somewhat similar to what Azula had attempted, she realised.

In some ways it should have felt like a violation, and perhaps in a way it was; Azula had controlled Katara's chi, boosted it, given her an impossible spiritually-charged spurt of energy, enough to transform it into a physical one. _Then Katara had bound her own throat together._

With a grimace Katara remembered Jet and how she had failed to inflate his lungs, to help the crushed twist of his organs, and the way it had felt, to sense the blood rushing into all the places in his body it wasn't supposed to go. Even with the full moon, and her later knowledge of bloodbending, she was uncertain that she would have been able to save him, if he lay before her now. Some things, plenty of things, would result in death, even if a waterbender stood by, ready and waiting. Healing her own throat should have been one of them. But she had done it all the same. Had bound it back together better than any stitch of thread could manage.

Katara staggered back from the water. And now, still trapped by the memory, she drew some water from the pond away from the irritated quack of turtle-ducks, and smoothed it up beside the riddled knots of bark that peeled from the overhanging tree. A long pane of reflective ice now stood before her and Katara bit her lip. She had seen it, the evidence, the result of where her throat had been laid bare to the elements countless times before now, had touched it, but still…

She steeled herself. Took a breath. And then she stared at _it._ She looked at her throat, her finger tracing the ugly line of it left in the mirror, over the bump of a red ragged crack than now ran over her skin. She could cover it with her mother's necklace she supposed, but the bump it left behind in the slightly raised ridge of her skin, would jostle the blue thread above, perhaps even make the marbled blue stone that hung beneath protrude in a way it had not before.

Katara shook herself. If Zuko can live with more than one scar, she told herself firmly. Then so can I.

* * *

Azula observed her with calm eyes. Too calm.

Katara stood at the door to the cell, Suki at her side, glaring into the dark, dusty red spill of the room inside. Cracked bricks and iron bars…and none of it, she was sure, was enough to keep Azula inside. One day, one way or another, she would get out.

'I'm not thanking you,' she informed Azula stiffly. 'I don't know what you did…but I know it helped me. Without it I'd be dead. But even so. I'm not thanking you.'

Azula's lips curved. 'Where's my brother? I'm suuuure he'd be so happy to find you visiting me without his constipated expression hovering over your shoulder.'

Katara's brow furrowed and she stepped forward. 'I'm not about to make you tea and step inside with a tray, the way he would do,' she spat harshly. 'You're not my family; and you're not the only one who can influence somehow else's chi.' She stepped forward, hand outstretched, already concentrating on the fluid she could feel bubbling up under Azula's skin, tendrils of water snaking out of her pouch nestled against her side, ready to dive through those prison bars and spiral round Azula's chained-up form. It would be so easy…

And then Suki's hand clamped round her wrist with a heavily tight grip. Katara blinked, water hovering in the air before it shamefully crept back into her pouch.

But Azula's eyes still _gleamed_ before her pointedly, hovering between the splintered set of the bars as the gold in them seemed to laugh at her viciously.

'Not everything can be solved with bending,' Suki said calmly, a thread of steel in her voice. 'Sometimes I think you and Aang forget that.'

Katara jerked her hand away, surprised when Suki's hand didn't let go immediately, choosing to hold her strained wrist in place for several moments a sthough to make a point. It brought back home the point that Suki was stronger than her, at least physically. It was easy to forget sometimes, especially since she had never really sparred with the other girl in earnest. Perhaps she should fix that.

Azula snorted. 'All non-benders tell themselves that, because they have to. Don't get me wrong,' she added, on seeing Suki's irate glare being directed her way. 'I acknowledge your skills. There's a reason I favoured my old traitorous friends over any other bender at my side. I value skill more than general ability. But there's still a world of difference between power and skill at times. An immeasurable gap which not just anybody can cross.'

She smirked at Katara. 'Even a peasant can see that. Can't you, Katara?'

Katara jolted. It was the first time she had ever heard her name uttered by Azula's lips, and she didn't much like it.

She folded her arms. 'I don't think I much want to see what _you_ can, Azula.'

Azula smiled, wide and full. 'But you can sense much of what I can, surely? That's what counts.' Her smile dipped, the line of it lowering, becoming tricky to watch. 'Or do you believe your bending is the only one that truly matters? The only one that can 'save?''

Katara's jaw tightened. 'All I know is that you never use yours to 'save' anything,' she retorted hotly. 'Not unless it helps you twisted agenda. Whatever that happens to be this time round.'

She turned on her heel and left. She felt twitchy and agitated. Twisted inside. The feeling didn't go away, even after she tried to nestle her tongue with the hot, syrupy tea Ursa had taught her to make with plants cultivated from the royal gardens. The woman was far away, with her chosen family, closeted, safe. Dimly Katara wondered if she should send a message to her, informing her of Azula's new whereabouts, before convincing herself that Zuko had probably already done so. He seemed determined to do right by Azula, even if Katara privately thought such a thing would end up doing them all a costly wrong.

'Are you okay?' Suki asked her quietly at her side.

Katara stared into her face, daubed in shades of red and white, her eyes bright with a colour a little too similar to a shade to Azula's own. It was a deception she knew; Suki's eyes were a different colour from Azula's entirely, it was just the contrast of her face-paint marking them as otherworldly, making them seem brighter than they truly were.

Katara's hands shook on the teacup.

'No,' she said. 'But that doesn't mean I won't be.'

* * *

Later, she decided to visit where the dragon had originally stood, seconds after racing out of the sky and bellowing out a series of impressive flames, like a beacon saying 'WAKE UP AND ATTEND TO ME.' By all accounts it had been a rather frightening affair at the time. Or so she was told. She ended up dragging Zuko along with her for the quest, to explore the long slabs of stone outside, now pockmarked with a flare of sooty black. They hung out towards the volcano range at the back of the palace, almost like an extended courtyard, but free from the grander decorations of fences and pillars that were designed to impress others, and could usually be seen skirting around the other areas of the palace. By comparison, this piece of land seemed almost…bland.

Katara decided that she liked it.

'What was it like?' she asked Zuko excitedly, freeing herself from the grasp of his coddling hand. Her eyes roved over the fertile green that raced beneath the stones, moss clinging to their sides in soft blankets of artistic green, smoothing them over like a secondary skin. This entire place felt like something Aang would like, similar to the spiritual oasis of the North Pole and she marvelled at the fact that the militaristic fever of the Fire Nation and its rulers for the past century had left it untouched. Or perhaps, they had simply ignored it, sensing something about it that made them wary.

Zuko stared at her a little grumpily. Despite his desire to cure the world of Sozin's legacy, even he seemed tetchy and irritable round the atmosphere here.

'It wasn't nearly as great as you seem to think it was. There's nothing comforting about seeing a dragon rear down and terrify the people you're supposed to protect. It's a miracle I managed to prevent anyone from doing anything stupid, like you know, attacking a creature everyone here believed to be extinct. I've heard more than a few mutterings of how they always knew my uncle was too much of a coward to actually go out and slay one. '

Katara scowled at that. 'That's awful!'

'Yes,' Zuko agreed. 'But I have to bear it, or else suffer Mai stabbing me somewhere I can't see. Without her, I'd be nicknamed 'the immature dragon of the west,' or something equally stupid.'

Katara frowned. Some part of her felt she should be more involved in Fire Nation politics and the meetings Zuko presided over. But neither of them wished to rock the boat, and deep down, given what she had learned from Ursa's own mouth, it seemed spouses were expected to behave more like figureheads for occasions like that. Although apparently, Iroh and Ozai's own mother, Ilah had ventured her own opinion into the room several times. Ursa, much to her relief, had often been barred from the meetings altogether.

Katara shook her head. She suspected that one day she would find her way into some of those meetings, if not all of them, and she doubted Zuko would tolerate anyone seeing her as a nuisance. One day. But not today or anytime soon.

'You think you're grand enough to be called a dragon?' she asked, eyebrow twisting upwards. 'Personally, I think you'll be named something like 'the dancing boar-hedgehog.'

Zuko raised a brow back in challenge. 'Since when do I dance?'

Katara laughed, turning back to rest a faux reassuring hand on his shoulder. 'Oh, Zuko…what's the matter? You seemed so proud of learning all the movements of the 'dancing dragon' once upon a time. Surely, you're not turning your back on that? You perform it regularly enough.'

'It's not a dance!' Zuko retorted angrily, shrugging her hand off with a smooth roll of his shoulder. 'It's an ancient firebending form!' Then he paused, a thought occurring to him and making his eyes gleam in appreciation. 'Besides…you're right, Katara. It's called the dancing _dragon._ Why wouldn't I be named after one, if I perform it's…'dance'' – and here his face twisted into a painful knot of misery before smoothing itself out rapidly –'…as regularly as you say I do?'

Katara hesitated. 'Okay,' she acknowledged. 'You have a point. Not a great one, but yeah, I guess it counts.'

Zuko smirked.

Katara huffed and spun round again. 'Still,' she remarked glibly. 'You could give me _something_ to work with here! You know, when I asked you about what it was like to see a dragon streaming from the sky, one you actually rode on, I expected something more thrilling! Not yeah, people screamed, and that's it!'

Zuko rubbed the back of his neck awkwardly as Katara huffed and crouched down, arms crossed over her knees to form a platform for her pouting face. Sulkily, one of her arms detached itself from under her chin, a hand running down to allow a finger to poke and proud at one of the long stains of soot-marks by her foot.

At least, she thought moodily, my body's starting to obey me more easily now.

Zuko sighed, and the next moment, she felt a gentle hand stroke its way over her shoulder, the long line of him falling over her back to shield her from the sun overhead.

'I'm not Tadir-' he started and Katara snorted at that. Tadir was a middle-aged guard, someone she was a little fond of, because the excited faces he made reminded her of Sokka and the way life seemed to explode into his every expression when he because enthused by the words tripping out of his tongue. Quite the contrast to Zuko, especially when it came to talking about the dragon.

'It was like something out of a legend,' that guard had told her excitedly, not two days ago. 'It just soared out of the sky, all red and squiggly, like a snake swimming through a river or something! Only it was through the clouds! And pandemonium struck! I tell you, there were screams, mothers yanking back their bratty kids, scurrying like armadillo-ants, or at least, well, they sure looked like ones in the city down below, all those little dots trailing around… ' the little-boy enthusiasm his voice was carrying faded as a new thought entered his head. 'Gosh, I sure hope my brats were being dragged back as well down there! If they weren't I'd give them a dressing down like you wouldn't believe!'

Katara had coughed out a weak giggle behind her hand at the time. 'I'm sure,' she said. 'They're far braver than I would be at their age if they were fighting to take a peek!'

He had beamed at her, she remembered.

But there was no such similar look on Zuko's face now as he spoke.

'- I just want the dragons to be left alone,' he continued guardedly. 'I didn't want people to panic, to call for them to be hunted down into nothing, now that they know they're still out there. Thankfully, I was able to get here in time to stop my guards from killing either it or themselves. And I think seeing me ride off on one, has at least calmed people enough to not see them as uncontrollable monsters, the way they've been built up to be in some of the newer tales that have come into being the past hundred years or so. 'Love Among the Dragons' is still a classic, but no one believes real dragons are like that, not really.'

But Katara's own smile dipped and faded from existence. She knew deep down, that it must have been terrifying for the people here. But her experience had been different; the dragon had burst in to help Zuko save her for some unknowable reason. She hadn't seen it as something to be scared of, not with Zuko on its back. She had seen it as a saviour, something similar to the way Appa had often arrived in the nick of time with a brush of his heavy tail.

She stopped to picture it now, how it would have been for those in the palace, the swooping curl of grace they saw as the dragon descended from the sky, like something from the stories. It's eyes and its teeth and its size, how it turned them into dwalves as its shadow ran over the buiding, dancing over the slopes of the palace roof. The guards must have all rushed out in a panic, weapons poised and firebender stances drawn up even if they had probably already understood the futility, or at least realised how many of them would die before they wrecked any sort of mortal wound against the red scales shimmering in front of them.

'I told them to stand down,' Zuko said with a shrug by her side. 'Luckily that dragon was roaring loud enough for me to hear in my chambers, back when I was stuck pouring over one of the most boring scrolls I've ever had the bad luck to struggle through.'

Katara rolled her eyes. 'You think all of them are boring.'

Zuko pouted. 'Not all of them. Just…the ones with all the legal footnotes.' He walked over to where the green of the volcano behind shone through, rolling up a steep incline to reveal the foreboding rock above. 'And when it just… stared at me, I don't know… I felt…I felt like I had to go with it.' He looked at her apologetically. 'And then Mai traipsed in and said, 'finally something exciting to do,' and well, I wasn't stupid enough to tell her to stay behind so…'

Katara smiled. 'Sounds like Mai.'

Zuko turned quiet. 'I didn't even know you were gone,' he said hoarsely. 'But when that dragon started crashing through the wall, and I got a glimpse of Azula and you…well…you know what happened.'

Katara sighed, leaning her head on his shoulder. 'It's like Sokka says. Weird stuff happens, the universe has it out for us, yadda, yadda…and then sometimes it doesn't. It gives something back.'

'It never comes for free,' Zuko warned, arm creeping round her waist. 'Good things happen, but they don't last. And there's often, when it comes to people like us, a reason behind them.' His face settled into a thoughtful scowl. 'I've already sent a messenger hawk to my uncle. If anyone can help decipher the universe's message to us, it's him.'

* * *

The dragon stared at her. Katara stared back. Coiled in the stables, ostrich horses and lizards, scurrying into the shadows in fright, Katara stepped forward bravely to meet the golden gleam of its eyes.

How strange, she thought as she reached out to pet its snout, Zuko unbearably tense beside her. This animal was descended from the very first firebenders, a custodian of an art that was almost lost in its entirety. It had nothing to do with the pull of the moon, or the push of the tide, nothing to do with waterbending. But the red of its coil, the heat of its nostrils, drew her in, gave her the courage to make the final step and push her hand over the ridge and bumps of its nose. The scales were warm under her skin, leathery, with the odd furnished gleam of the metallic sliding into their colour, as though to trick her eyes into believing the sensation should feel more alien than it did.

The dragon breathed against her a little more strongly, the breath turning into a searing heat rather than a comforting warmth, and Katara hastily stepped back.

'Thank you,' she told it guardedly, resisting the urge to reach up and curve her fingers over the scar that now dappled her neck below her necklace and oddly, for a moment, she swore she saw a welcoming glint in the eyes before her.

Zuko touched the side of her waist, a hand curling protectively round her hip. 'The councillors won't like it,' he said quietly. 'But even they feel some sort of respect when they stare at this dragon. A lot of them are looking at me differently ever since I rode on him.'

'It's a him?' Katara asked quietly.

Zuko stared at the dragon a moment, seemingly lost in thought. 'Yeah,' he said, almost surprised. 'Yeah, I think so. I mean the Sun Warriors never told me which was Ran and which was Shaw…but I think this one's Ran.'

Katara breathed. 'Then let's go,' she said quietly. 'If he's willing to give us a lift, that is. I mean, he's no Appa-'

Ran let out a low, humming growl.

'-but I bet he's even faster,' Katara finished off quietly, sending a silent mental apology to Appa wherever he was.

Zuko smiled at her fondly. 'There's no way I'm letting you ride a dragon _alone._ Besides –' he added as he stepped forward, the growl from the dragon fading into an odd purr as he approached. 'I think Ran likes me better.'

Katara folded her arms. 'Show-off,' she muttered, before a big grin split her face as Zuko yelped, the coil of Ran's thick tongue rapidly swiping out to curl affectionately round his leg as he passed. 'That's right, good dragon, ' she told Ran as she swept past Zuko, who was now carefully pulling his leg away from the globs of salvia weighing it down. 'Lick the Fire Lord, go on, he really appreciates it!'

Zuko glared at her.

'Careful, ' Katara told him with a laugh. 'He might aim for your face next!'

But the laughter was quickly wiped from her face a few seconds later as it became clear that neither Zuko or her had no real idea how to ride a dragon. Or more importantly, how to get it to fly with them still seated. Not that it violently reared up and bucked them off, oh no. It simply eyed them grumpily as they gingerly clambered onto his back then slumped his head down to the ground like a cat, with a long, slow blink of contentment.

Katara gave a blink of her own, an astounded quaver in her voice as she asked, 'is he seriously going to sleep!?'

Zuko hooked his head over the sides of their new seats and let out a long drawn sigh. 'Yes. Yes he is.' Then he glanced down at the scales beneath his head, giving them a slow, awkward pat as he did so.

'Err…I don't really think telling a dragon to 'yip-yip' is going to do much good here…'

More importantly, it looked like he didn't want to. Katara couldn't blame him. She didn't really want to push their luck with Ran either. No, she thought with a nervous edge of what felt to be hysteria, you could not simply tell a dragon to 'yip-yip.' Or just simply ask it nicely to go to Bai Sing Sei.

'Please,' Zuko added hopefully after a few more seconds of them being awkwardly nursed between the dipping weave of Ran's crest on his back, and not really meeting each other's eyes. 'Err, if you wouldn't mind, great master? We really need to get to Bai Sing Sei…and if you don't know where it is, well, we've been there and can point you in the general direction?'

Ran opened his eyes, lolling his head to the side like a playful polar-bear-dog as his jaws parted, tongue dripping out between his teeth. He let out a rather amused sounding puff. And then the scales beneath them shifted, the crest and all its ridges trapped beneath their bodies, rolled and curved, and Ran slid out into the sun, the shadows of the stable sliding away from his haunches. His wings spread, mighty partitions that Katara couldn't help but marvel at, the shiny membrane so alien to her eyes, in place of the bending that allowed Appa to lift and hover in the air.

And then they started to move. Up, a gust sweeping into her robes and forcing them to flare, Zuko gripping her hand as a startled gasp was swept out of her mouth. It was so brusque and abrupt, this movement, the sensation of launching up into the air, so at odds with Appa's movement because his back barely ever stirred beneath the saddle they sat in, that she felt a small sense of shock. Here, muscles were constantly bunching and flexing and lifting, the motions jerking throughout the body beneath her, jogging her legs with a series of slams. It wasn't bad. Just…different. And now that she was fully awake to appreciate it, unlike last time, the motion, the rhythm, so different from Appa's was soothing in its repetitiveness.

Still. She did find herself preferring Appa's slightly calmer movements overall.

The blue of the ocean soon passed beneath her feet, the sparkle of the sun touching the creases in the waves below and Katara breathed in deeply, feeling the cold air crisp her lungs. This far above the sea, the scent of salt was faint, almost like soft mint, and it reassured her in a way few other things could.

'That way!' Zuko yelled out of a sudden. 'You've veering too far east!' He flung an arm out as a pointer, and Ran grunted and swerved slightly to accommodate. Though not without giving Zuko a rather scornful look with a single gleaming eye.

'Maybe we shouldn't land too near the city,' Katara shouted over the rise of wind and the flare of her hair, leaking out before her eyes, despite the style she'd attempted to fasten it back into one similar to the tight streamlined one she'd worn when confronting Yon Rha. Impatiently she brushed the strands aside. 'We don't want to create a panic!'

Zuko laughed. Then drew out a long, slightly creased banner of some sort, that he'd shuffled under his robes. 'It's not quite a flag of surrender,' he explained, allowing Katara to glance over the embalm of a golden dragon. 'But it's a design that I've already agreed upon with other ambassadors. Like…a sort of diplomatic, not-quite-offering-immunity style flag. It lets people know that we've here on a visit, not to cause harm and that we've certified by the royal family. In case my face isn't proof enough. At any rate I'm going to let it flare out, let the soldiers on watch duty take a good long look at it.'

Katara smiled. And hoped it would be enough.

* * *

It would take them a few days. A few nostalgic days of camping out, of bossing Zuko into heating the water for her, and not touching the eggs they'd bought from a local farm, or even questioning if that was really the right way to skin a rabbit-toucan they'd caught earlier. Zuko gave her an exasperated look. 'You've seen me do this hundreds of times before!'

Katara wrinkled her nose. 'I know, I know, it's just…it always looks more time-consuming than the way Sokka does it. Or I do it.'

He paused, looking offended. 'Seriously? You're comparing me to Sokka?'

Katara's gaze was steady. And then her mouth twitched. 'No, it's fine, you're fine. We all know what we're doing, we just haven't really had to cook in the wild for ourselves for what feels like forever.'

'Yeah,' said Zuko quietly.

They stared at each other, the light from the fire spilling into Zuko's knife which had stopped, mid-thrust.

Then:

'You'll save me from the pirates, right?' Zuko asked with a dorky grin and Katara choked on a laugh.

'What pirates, there's no river large enough for a boat to travel down around here!'

Zuko blushed, the colour turning rosy under the light from the flames. Between the spitting gaps of darkness they left as they flickered and danced, Katara saw the pallor of his skin dyed orange, so bright, unlike her own. Like a lantern in the dark.

'Urgh,' he said. 'That was terrible, wasn't it? I don't even know where that came from, I just wanted to make a joke of how things used to be and how far we've come from that, and yet here we are, together, camping in a way we didn't really have time for when I finally, well, became good.'

Katara smiled softly, leaning into his side. 'I think,' she said, her voice tender, like the hand she lay over his cheek. 'That it was less you becoming 'good' and more of you brushing off the 'bad' that you thought you had to be in order to get what you wanted.'

Zuko gave a wry smile. 'Good job I got what I needed, rather than what I wanted, huh?'

Katara's smile quirked. 'Well, I don't know. You can still get plenty of things you 'want' right now,' for instance.

She pressed the knife into the sodden flesh of the dead rabbit-toucan, out of the way of her oncoming press of her body. And kissed him deeply. Almost hungrily, with the fire serving as a warm backdrop against the curve of her back. Then she pulled away, Zuko sticky and sweet on her tongue.

'But not all of them,' she added with a grin. 'That, comes after dinner.'

Zuko gave her an annoyed look, the loose opening of his mouth sucked back in wake of Katara's absence. 'Toph,' he said, pointing a finger at her. 'Has got nothing on you. She may be the Melon Lord, but you Katara, are the Papaya Mistress!'

Katara raised a hand to her mouth. 'There's no way I'm evil enough to deserve being called a-a-a papaya!' she exclaimed. 'Maybe you won't get anything you want, after all!'

Zuko chuckled, an odd tint of disappointment in his eyes. 'Don't worry,' he told her firmly, resettling the knife back within his hand. 'I've been told I'm good at not giving up when I'm chasing after things.'

* * *

Practically a day later, Ba Sing Sei came into view, the walls rising dark and almost foreboding against the surrounding sand and rock. It brought back bad memories, memories of a Zuko she had been naïve enough to believe in before either of them were ready to understand each other's position, memories of Aang falling, conquered by a single stroke of lightening that Azula, the person Zuko had chosen to fall in line with, had unleashed. Katara sulked at the images, only slightly mollified by the mangos that the Zuko of the present day had dropped into her lap for breakfast, as beneath them, almost tangling with Ran's legs, trailed the scarlet and gold flag. And yet, that did not seem to prevent a few panicked boulders from being hurtled up towards them.

Katara readied herself, ripping water out of the leather skins she wore over her back, but Ran seemed to have it covered; almost dismissively, the great dragon spat out flames so powerful that the rocks were expelled backwards at the force, falling to the desert below in a charred heat of melted slag a few seconds later.

Katara remained tense though as they swept down in a graceful arc, some more rocks hurtling towards them, though the soldiers, no longer stick fingers or mere inky blots within her vision, were smarter this time, clenched fists moving and swerving in precise diagonal strikes as the boulders wavered in midair and changed course to hurtle away from Ran's fire-belching mouth and attempt to strike him in his side.

As one Katara and Zuko stood, twirling round to slice the approaching rocks with crescent-shaped sickles of water and fire. At this point they were highly visible and there were shouts, and lot of sleeve-clutching as people started to yell out their names and titles, or rather Zuko's title. Katara, while not quite famous in the same way Aang and Zuko were, was still recognised more than she would like to be. There weren't that many people with her complexion in this part of the world, and doubled with her obviously water tribe clothing, she and Sokka still tended to stick out like a sore thumb.

Ran swept over the wall, thankfully no longer accosted by flying rocks and landed down in a field, far, far away from Aang's makeshift zoo, or any other herds of animals. They stayed only long enough to give instructions at the nearest barracks to not disturb Ran, and that no, they would be back in time to feed him (while tactfully leaving out the part that Ran seemed to provide for himself for the most part) and took the nearest train into the middle ring.

'Good think about being Fire Lord,' Zuko grumped as he yanked out a few gold ingots for their pass. 'Being able to afford the little conveniences that make the boring or depressing parts of travelling move quicker.'

Katara stared at him incredulously. 'You love camping. Or at least, you like it more than a lot of other things I've seen you do as Fire Lord.'

Zuko shrugged. 'I had you to share the burden with. It's easier when you've got someone helping you to cook and clean. On your own, or just with an uncle who ends up poisoning himself every few minutes with strange plants he would be better off leaving alone? Not so much.'

Katara gave him a look. 'Ooooh, I _have_ to hear this story!'

Zuko grinned as the city spun past them outside the carriage. 'I've already told it. Back in the days when you still hated me, while everyone else was beginning their set of life-changing journeys with me. I also thought you weren't listening that time. Guess I finally got my proof.'

Katara smiled bashfully. That wasn't much she could say to that, really, was there? Besides, it wasn't as though she hadn't had good reason not to trust Zuko back then, and he knew it too.

It seemed like no time at all until they were standing before Iroh. He met them on the steps of his stop, hands carefully concealed within the sleeve of the other. He looked very grand and grave all of a sudden. And then suddenly a beaming smile overtook his face.

'Come, ' he said as he drew Zuko into his arms. 'I have a treat this young lady will love!'

Katara stared in suspicion at the mound of white in her bowl. The surface looked cracked, like the way tough glaciers could splinter under pressure and carefully she dipped her finger into it, drawing it back a moment later with a small noise of surprise.

'It's cold!'

'And quite delicious, I assure you,' Iroh said stoutly. Although he looked peaceful, as though he were doing nothing more than sipping at tea and relaxing, Katara got the impression that he was watching her reactions with a hunger that bordered on nearly Sokka levels. So rather stoutly herself, Katara scooped up a small part of the white thing, that though had hard grains of rice escaping its mussed-up surface, seemed soft, like a dough-ball or spicy pig-chicken bun. And after a moment's more hesitation, bit into it. Only to have it immediately flood her tongue with its icy temperature, the chill of which seeming to add a luxurious bite to the sweet milky flavour that accompanied it.

'It's a mixture of buffalo-yak milk, flour, crushed ice and rice,' Iroh said proudly. 'With maaaybe just a dash of some lily-vanilla that I've had a kind boy help me crush down each morning.'

Zuko immediately looked alarmed, his hand clenching the side of the table. 'Uncle!' he exclaimed. 'Please tell me that you looked up the plant in a book, or actually got an expert to verify it, before you gave it to Katara to _eat!'_

Iroh chuckled, petting the taunt grip of Zuko's fingers with a patient hand. 'Relax nephew. I would never endanger your nice young lady friend. I've no wish to invite another frown onto your face! Besides, I've been giving this dish to plenty of other customers this past month. And no one had actually died!' he leaned back with a conspirial wink and an additional whisper of, 'I'm thinking of calling this dish chilblain! Because of the way it almost kills your tongue with its icy like chill!'

'No,' Zuko says with a rather sick look upon his face. 'Please don't.'

Katara closed her eyes in bliss. ' _Please,_ ' she said, a near whine in her voice. 'You have to give me the receipe!'

Zuko looked at her in surprise. 'You mean…it's actually good?'

At that Iroh gave a theatrical sniff, raising his hand to rub his sleeve unconvincingly against his eyes. 'Oh, to think of all those times I cooked for you and brewed tea for you when we were lolwly refugees living in this fine city-'

'Your cooking is fine,' Zuko said dryly, appraising his uncle with an unimpressed look. 'It's your experimenting with flowers I object to. It never goes well when you decide to mess with botany.' Ignoring the way his uncle started to blow his nose with a hanky he yanked out of his sleeve – a very clean hanky, Katara noted- Zuko sated down at the dish before Katara, blinking as with a few rapid bites and a heavy glower at him, Katara made the desert disappear.

'Get your own!' he told him lowly. 'You're way richer than I am! You can afford it!'

Zuko shrugged, and before she could stop him, reached out to swipe a finger against the part of the plate where the desert had partially melted into goop.

'Hey,' she protested as he licked said finger thoughtfully. 'I was saving that!'

'I'll buy you more,' he said idly. 'I'm rich, remember?'

Katara puffed out her cheeks. Right now, she wanted to whack him with a snowball. But Iroh was looking at them, misty-eyes and with a crude grin on his face that looked like it belonged on well, Sokka's face rather than his own.

'Ah,' he said, 'it seems you're rich in more than one way, Zuko.'

Zuko made a face. 'I see your gift for subtlety hasn't changed either, Uncle. Though I will admit your new dessert is actually pretty good.' He fixed his uncle with a firm look. 'And while I'd love to catch up with you, we need your help.'

The smile faded from Iroh's eyes. 'Ah,' he said. 'You mean the dragon I've heard whispers about is real? Yes. That is an honour you do not want to offend lightly, Zuko.'

Katara cringed slightly. Riding a giant dragon was not subtle either. She could read it on every line of Iroh's face.

Zuko coughed. 'I've no intention of doing so. But…it came to help me. To help me help Katara, I mean. It knew where she was and that she was in danger before anyone else knew. And I would feel more at ease, we both would - if we knew why.'

Iroh hummed. Then got to his feet and began to tidy away the plates, with firm hands. With each clink of ceramic china meeting each other, and the rattle of chopsticks scattered across their surface, his eyes dimmed, as though each sound was a full sentence in a language only he could understand.

'Uncle?' Zuko asked.

Iroh sighed. 'You know, Bai Sing Sei may not have much connection to the Spirit World; not n the way the city at the North Pole does, or in other place that are not quite as…tightly pressed together. But things still slip through the cracks. People from all over come here, and bring their religions and gifts for the things they worship. This city has amassed a following of ghosts, stray slip-streams of spirits that pass through following the echoes of their prayers, their sentiments for the homes they have lost. My suggestion is to be careful, to seek out these places. They are most active at night.'

He fixes Zuko with a steady look. 'You were once filled with a similar longing that many of the people here still feel. If you remember, you may find yourself gravitating to such things. I cannot say why a dragon has chosen to reveal itself to you or why it would care for the survival of a water tribeswoman; maybe it was a fleeting impulse; it is not just humans who act on a whim. Or maybe it was something more. But one thing I do know; you should not bring too many people into this. Spirits hate intruders. But I would advise you to take the Avatar's advice as well, if this does become a matter involving them.'

Katara's heart sank.

'I'm not sure if that's such a good idea,' she said softly.

Iroh fixed her with a look. 'But the spirits,' he said with a devastating softness, 'might.'


	14. And shone, bright and afraid,

'We're not calling Aang,' Katara said firmly, her boots striking up an angry rhythm against the paving stones outside.

Night had fallen, bringing new shapes slyly into life thanks to the darker slant of the shadows - and the harried way people seemed to move wasn't helping this taunt new atmosphere either. They scurried like tiger-mice, keeping their eyes firmly fixed on their destinations, away from each other, and the possible glint of any knives hidden in the pockets of those who moved a little _too_ steadily by them. Katara shook herself, letting her gaze rest on the lights that shimmered in windows and the lanterns that shone from beside the hanging tapers of the braver shops, before re-building her courage and moving firmly past their golden thrall. But she couldn't help but bristle at Zuko's continued silence.

'I _said-_ ,' she declared, spinning round fast enough to savour the look of apprehensive surprise on his face, '-that we're not calling Aang. No _writing,_ no _pleading_ , no _awkwardnes_ s, full-stop.' She rocked back on her heels, her triumphant flush of emotion breaking down slightly as Zuko gave her a sympathetic smile.

'Awkwardness,' he repeated glumly. 'Yes, you're right about that. But we can't avoid him forever.'

Katara's arms scrambled through the air in front of her defensively, not sure what they should be doing, before her hands finally decided to settle on her hips. Feeling slightly foolish and not a little bit like Sokka, she puffed out her chest. 'I'm not avoiding him! Aang and I are still friends! We're just…going through a rough patch! It's difficult when you're dealing with an ex and have to settle into different roles and this...this is just an awkward transition! Everybody goes through it!' She stopped and glared at Zuko as a nasty thought struck her. 'Have you been reading my letters?!' she accused, wincing at the thought of what he might have made of the last one sent from Aang.

Zuko's face went very still all of a sudden. 'No,' he said roughly, his voice low and his tone hurt. 'I would _never_ -' he cut himself off. 'That's something,' he said, in a much lighter tone, 'that my father would do. _Did,_ in fact, do. To my mother. When he forbid her to interact with anyone from her past life in Hira'a and she tried to anyway.'

Katara halted, suddenly feeling very small and afraid. Mostly of herself and her ranting mouth.

'Zuko,' she said, immediately chastened. 'I'm sorry, I didn't think, I…' but no further excuse bubbled up on her tongue.

Zuko sighed, looking away from her. 'No,' he said softly, 'you didn't.'

Katara felt even more queasy at the way shadows seemed to race into his face at that, stealing his expression from her. A little like Koh could do.

She swallowed and stepped a little further into the light thrown out by a nearby lantern.

'Zuko,' she said again, more softly. She reached out to take his hand, one concealed in darkness as it hung limply at his side like a claw, before breathing out a mental sigh of relief when he allowed her to trace its shape with her own. 'I'm sorry. You're right about everything you didn't say. I don't want to have to deal with Aang properly or the fact that I hurt him. It was necessary, but I hate the fact that I caused him any pain at all. I guess, for the longest time I've always seen myself as his protector. It was always me who spoke to him, or drove him out of his emotional funks and helped keep his hope alive. All of us have suffered, but the suffering Aang felt, having his entire people taken from him, travelling the world and seeing how little of them and their history remains it just…when I think about it and I may have added even a little more pain to him, it feels unbearable.'

Zuko squeezed her hand, eyes swivelling round to meet her own. 'I know,' he said. 'Or I guessed at any rate. I know how protective you've always been of him. But I also know that there's no one more optimistic than Aang. No one stronger, when it comes to bouncing back. As long as you don't regret your decision; that's the main thing.'

Katara smiled. 'No,' she said. 'Not the happy parts of it; that's all on you.'

Zuko looked a little pleased at that. 'Come on,' he said, 'there's somewhere I want to show you.'

Katara tripped after him as he jogged down the street, before dragging her down another and _yet_ another one after that. She was laughing a little by the time they entered a small courtyard that was tucked away around a fountain, and Zuko smiled at her, before dropping her hand to whirl round and point his fingers into the air. Instantly, flamed darts zipped out like arrows into the tall street lamps encircling the simple design and Katara watched them burst into life, the flames flickering for a moment as she admired the way they perched beneath their papery shields and flared out into perfect ovals of lights, much like the burnished shine of masks in a parade. Then she shivered a little, reminded of Koh once again, and wrapped an arm loosely round one of Zuko's own.

'It's a pretty little place,' she said softly. 'Perfect for a pinic. Sokka would think it quaint.'

Zuko grinned down at her. 'Not if he was with Suki.'

Katara smiled at that, hugging him tightly. 'Sure,' she said, 'I can see that happening. But I'm guessing you came here a lot when you lived in Bai Sing Sei?'

Zuko's grin turned awkward. 'No,' he said, 'just the once. I was…on a date with a girl. Jin, her name was.'

Katara dropped his arm and raised her brow. 'Smooth, Zuko,' she said, amused at the way he flinched, even if a small surge of irritation _did_ play out across her tone. 'Inviting me for a repeat performance of a date you had with someone else!'

Zuko cringed. 'I…' he said, 'said I was from the circus and made a real fool of myself if it makes you feel any better?'

Katara's other brow raised to join her first one. 'I hope she asked for a demonstration!'

'Yeah,' he said awkwardly. 'It went…okay.'

'Really?' Katara asked scornfully. 'What did she tell you to do? Juggle?'

Zuko's flinch told her all she needed to know. And she couldn't quite help the giggle that escaped her.

'Urgh,' said Zuko. 'I thought you'd find this place pretty and that would be it. Not that I'd become a joke.'

Katara grinned, cuddling up to him again. 'Aww,' she said. 'Don't worry. I think you're cute when you're flustered.'

Zuko glared down at her, grumbling slightly under his breath. 'Great,' he muttered. And Katara grinned up at him in silent reply, before pressing herself up on her toes and drawing his face down towards hers with the simple guiding press of her palms against his cheeks. Fondly, she pressed her lips against his suddenly quiet mouth, savouring the widened eyes in front of her before she closed her own. Short and perfect, her lips still smarting from the cool air outside and the many, many 'chilblains' deserts she had devoured under the eager eyes of Iroh, she felt smoothed over, eroded slightly by the drier brush of Zuko's own.

'Okay,' said Zuko after she pulled away. 'That was better. _Definitely_.'

Katara laughed and was joined by the chime of another, a child's. She frowned at the thought of a child being stuck out here at this hour of night and spun round, ready to ask if they needed help getting home…and froze.

She felt the press of Zuko's fingers all too suddenly, the bite of them digging into her shoulders as they tightened and drew her back, away from the gleam of the lamps as the flames inside stretched out to become faces, no, _masks_. Another peal of laughed joined the first, then another, loud and hooting, like a swallow-monkey's.

Darkness poured through the eyes and mouth holes of the masks, darkness that seemed out of place against the dusty swirl of the sandy, lavender ground, darkness a shade of hue darker than the shadows that slid over the building walls outside. Each brandished an expression with cruel, thin slits for eyes, their snarling mouths curled in sadistic glee. Katara and Zuko crouched, now back to back, Katara swiftly drawing water from the fountain to surround them, while keeping enough wide spaces available between the curve of their tendrils for Zuko to pummel anything approaching them with fire. She had her pouches filled with water as usual, but it was always stupid not to take advantage of a larger source of water when it splashed ready and waiting nearby.

It was at that precise moment that a green hand, gnarled and almost bone-like, primitive in shape with the muscular tendons warped like the swirling pattern of vines, pushed itself out of the wall of water Katara had conjured forth and sprung over her like a trap. It was large, large enough to encase both her and Zuko, though it seemed quite content to leave him alone. instead it seemed all too happy to close in on _her,_ one large finger bumping against her ribcage while another dragged up against her hair, forcing a gasp out of her. She flailed, her waterbending form quickly falling apart as her limbs were torn away from their usual movements, her wall of water shivering and shaking apart to form a large puddle over the street. There was nothing to slow them down, especially as the mask's mouths opened to issue a quivering stream of purple wasp-moths that poured forth to buffet at Zuko's robes as he struggled to reach her.

'Katara!' She heard him calling her name, and she wriggled, trying to turn and face him, but only succeeding in managing to grab hold of the sudden, desperate fear in his voice. 'No!'

Katara got one arm free and flung it blindly through the gaps of the great fingers, reaching back to him as the many tiered heads of the Mother of Faces rose from the fountain, water sloshing over its edge and pouring into the ground in violet spurts like miniature waterfalls.

 _'What unpleasantry,'_ she hissed, murmured, and cried, all at once, the sound of her multilayered voice rushing into the street. She had no eyes, no eyes to give them any kind of glance or a dispassionate gaze, but Katara could still feel something similar to it wash over her as Zuko's hand managed to tug fruitlessly at her own. ' _To come to a cluttered place, a place even my wolf balks at, with no great plane to run through and no trees to offer her shade…'_

Zuko's foot hit one of the great fingers, his own hand chopping down through the air as it became haloed in a writhing vortex of flames. But the Mother of Faces barely made a sound as the punch landed home, with only the smallest black charred spot appearing to dent the warped branches of her fingers as evidence of the hit. But perhaps it had done something all the same; because Katara was suddenly wretched back at an angle, her hand ripped away from Zuko's as she was pulled down towards the pavement, towards the shimmer of water that had once been her shield. She closed her eyes, bracing for the hit, only to meet a gelatinous barrier instead of stone, one that cushioned her body before giving way and letting her squish through into…

Katara opened her eyes and was confronted with the sheer lunacy of a deep ocean around her, tangles of seaweed playing across her vision as the sun drifted aimlessly above in a wan disc, far, far, _far_ too far above. Strange crabs clacked their pincers at her menacingly as faces writhed across their backs, and before she could panic or work her way through it in order to realise that there was no cold clutch of water seizing at her lungs to drive them free of air, Zuko's fist broke through the water after her. His arm was joined by his head, and he plunged out amongst the crabs, swimming furiously as Katara heard the Mother of Faces hiss out, _'what spell did you weave over my son?'_

And then panic broke into her lungs, pushed out air into her body and Katara wretched, free of the cage of a giant spirit's hand. She hurled, even though no water came spilling out of her lungs and after a few dizzying beats of her heart she finally realised that perhaps she had never been in danger of drowning in the first place.

She glanced round. The ocean was gone, _Zuko_ was gone, and mist spilled out, covering the rip of ferns and small animals (or were they?) skittered at her feet. Katara danced back.

'Don't be afraid, Sweetie.'

Katara's heart gave another jerky thump. And then she whirled, feeling her other heart, her more metaphorical one break at the sight of her mother's smiling face.

Kya smiled, all of her perfect, untouched by the charred scars and blackened skin that had stolen her life from her all those years ago. She wasn't dressed in the heavy parka Katara had seen her in on that terrible day, but the thinner robes they wore underneath instead, allowing the full length of her hair to spill down her back rather than remain trapped under a hood or coiled up in a bun.

Katara felt a lump spring to her throat. 'Mom,' she said. 'Mom!' And then she was running, almost tripping over the things that ran helter-skelter over her feet.

Kya laughed and Katara didn't care that this was probably like the Swamp all over again, that her Mom was dead, never to laugh or tell ghost stories to a small and eager Katara ever again. All that washed away as Kya responded to her hug, her own arms far weaker than Katara remembered, but still reaching round to engulf her sobbing daughter all the same.

'I guess I don't need you to find your Dad anymore, do I? Look at everything you've managed to do after he left you and your brother…I am so proud, Katara. So, so proud.'

Katara frantically swallowed another sob.

'I'm sorry!' it burst out of her wild and free. 'Sorry that I wasn't faster, that I didn't say something, anything else other than 'I'm scared,' something that would have made him leave you alone, I'm sorry I was a coward, that…that…I'm...'

 _Sorry that I was born a waterbender, because that, that is why they came for us._ It dried up on her tongue. Because she couldn't be, not really. No more than she could be sorry that she hurt Aang in order to be with Zuko, to make herself happy. But the guilt…it crawled up and ate her alive, even though she knew better.

'I'm not,' said Kya, and oh Tui, oh La, she sounded so _real._ 'You were no more a coward than I was. I wanted to run out of our home too. Besides, no eight year old should ever have to be braver than her parent. That's not the way it should work. If Yon Rha had taken you instead of me…think of how awful the world would be?'

Katara let out a shaky laugh. 'It would have been better still if you were in it,' she whispered, hungrily gazing at her mother, drinking down the blue of her eyes and the crinkle in her smile, all the ways lines littered and criss-crossed her face and made it real, better than a memory.

And then suddenly memory was all she left with as the Mother of Faces' great hand dived through the mist, wrapped itself over Kya's face, and effortlessly stripped it away with a great heave of light.

Katara shrieked, reaching out for water, any water, only, there was nothing there, not even a hint of the familiar energy she felt when she tried to bend and she remembered, abruptly, that no, Aang had told her bending wasn't possible in this place.

Kya's body, form, whatever it was, drifted away beneath the blank pane of skin where her face should have been.

 _'Did you know, that every face I make contains a spark of the spirit of the wearer?'_ the Mother of Faces questioned, her tone making it clear that she expected no real answer _. 'I place a part of myself into it and so a part of every person, when they die, return to me. Not their truest essence, just a semblance of who they were, an imprint of everything they did and were, and comes to rest in me. It often gives me inspiration to create new faces for their descendants, if they helped to create or bear any.'_

Katara's fist shook at her side in barely withheld fury. Blinking back tears, she glared at the Mother of Faces.

'So you're saying those words just then, those things _my mother,_ ' she stressed, 'never said…that was more than mere guesswork?'

The Mother of Faces observed her dispassionately. Without eyes, it was hard to read her expression, as the line of her mouth lay still, as though it were stuck inside a picture frame.

Katara took a breath, tears still leaking from her eyes, despite her best efforts. 'Where's Zuko?' she managed, in a weak, quivering voice. 'You didn't leave him back there, with those things, did you?'

'My servants, you mean,' the Mother of Faces said, with a slight hint of rage in her voice. 'Just because they wear their faces I gift them with on their backs instead of on their hands as your kind do, does not mean you should treat them as-'

'TREAT THEM AS WHAT?!' Katara roared out, a much stronger surge of anger tearing out of her and making her voice shrill and harsh. 'WHAT? NOTHING, **NOTHING** I'VE DONE COULD EVER BE AS BAD AS WHAT YOUR SON HAS DONE!'

She stopped, chest heaving. 'That's what this is about, right? Your son? I can't explain what I did to him, but the energy that was going through him, was wrong, you must have known that, all I did was smooth it out a little-'

The Mother of Faces' hand struck out again, and all the tangled twists of vines and branches that were coiled inside its gnarled shape flew loose to stretch out like multiple ropes, no, _whips_ , that raked down across Katara's form. Letting out a cry, as the rain of blows landed thick and fast across her arm as she raised it to cover her face, Katara stumbled backwards clumsily, the animals becoming a cunning swirl of motion at her feet, beneath the mist, to trip her up.

'He stole Ursa's face!' she called out, knowing that it probably wouldn't do any good; when spirits got like this they only ever seemed to listen to Aang. Still, she was damned if she wasn't going to try. 'And he took mine!'

A tremor rang through the giant spirit at that and Mother of Faces wobbled- there was no real word for it- her form shook and blurred, seeming to become one with the mist itself for a mere moment- and then she was back, the loose whips of her former arm curving back round for a second strike. Katara tried to clamber to her feet, failed, and slipped as something that felt more pig-snake than rat-lizard wrapped round her shin, and so cowered as the dark blur of the whip sailed through the air.

And remained cowering until a thin 'snick' of sound rang out, crisp and clear and the Mother of Faces let out a bellow of rage. Katara opened her eyes.

Zuko stood in front of her, his weight braced forward and two curved, slightly crushed pieces of a crab carapace in each hand. He held them loosely, easily, as though they were the twin swords he were used to handling and Katara started as she watch blood drip down from the ends he was holding, the thin strips of tattered cloth he'd ripped from his sleeves and bound round his hands, not bearing quite as much protection from the ragged ends of the broken shell pieces as he'd perhaps hoped.

The Mother of Faces reared back, the whips loosely folding back into themselves to form her arm once more. Only, Katara realised with a sick jolt, part of her finger was missing. Her eyes scurried over the rolls of thin mist, but it was lost to sight.

 _'You dare lay hand on my servants!'_ the Mother of Faces hissed at Zuko.

'No,' he said lowly, the reply steady from his mouth, though his eyes blazed. 'No, I dared talk to them. Turns out not all of them like the faces you've put on their backs. And I'm no artist, but even I know how to blot out an eye, or turned a frowning mouth into an inky grin with tentacle-squid oil. I wonder, when was the last time you talked to them?'

Katara blinked. If there was one thing that could make Zuko mad it was someone not listening or caring about the needs of the people they were supposed to protect and rule over. His eyes darted to her, anger evident in his face and Katara pushed up a wavering arm, wincing as she felt the burn of the long red scrape that ran across it like a welt, searing cloth from her skin.

'I'm…' she began, but found herself unable to spit out the following 'I'm fine,' after it. Because she wasn't. How could she be? She groaned, pushed herself upright. _'We'll_ be fine,' she corrected herself after a wobbly moment. 'If Sokka can manage without his bending all his life, then it won't kill me to do without mine for now.'

Zuko's mouth twitched, anger still in his eyes. 'Sokka's trained with a weapon. You haven't. Leave this to me. Please,' he added after a thoughtful moment.

Katara wanted to protest. But she wavered, a dull throb of agony creeping up her arm. What could she do without her bending but get in the way?

'Yeah? Well…you haven't trained with 'swords' that end up cutting your hands wide open!' she hissed to him in an aside.

Zuko grimaced. 'I'll manage.'

 _I'll have too_ , was the unspoken though that lay between them.

'Besides,' he added, almost airily, and so like Aang all of a sudden, that she wanted to give him a small water-whip to the face. 'I'm not losing you again.'

And then he barrelled backward into her as the Mother of Faces flicked out a long finger at them, missing their heads by inches. The giant hand slammed down into the mist, a tsunami of the grey air gushing forth like a geyser and Katara let out a cry as she was buried beneath Zuko's body, the cold slap of air pushing at her skin, digging its claws in deep.

'He took her face!' Zuko called up at the angry spirit, dancing up at her as his crab-swords darted at her fingers, his body swirling to avoid their downward thrust. Free of his weight, Katara rolled, stomped on a squirming lizard-rat thing that tried to run over her leg and lurched herself up again.

'He took her face and you expect her to lay down and die? She did whatever she had to survive and you dare punish her when your son was the one who hurt her and my mother! I thought you prided yourself on being kind and generous!'

Katara gasped as Zuko narrowly avoided having his eyes taken out, swooping low, his sword gliding forth in a swinging arc that knobbed off another finger tip. Then up he jumped, his feet landing on the bony arch of the fingers above as his boots sunk into their darkened crevices, perched across the tip of her knuckles. And then up he ran, up her arm, launching himself up and using his makeshift sword as hooks to chip and yank his way up whenever she tried to swot or shake him off.

Katara ran up, determined to serve as a distraction, even if she knew Zuko wouldn't be happy about it. 'You said, the last time we met, that humans are ungrateful, that we take and are never satisfied! But your son was the same!'

Again, the Mother of Faces blurred and Zuko almost fell through her shifting shape, regaining his footing only as she lurched back into her solid shape less than a second later. Katara watched, her heart in her mouth as he reached her shoulder.

'Please!' she called up, dodging round the other giant arm, one that crashed down towards her, almost desperately. 'I can show you what I did, back in our world! If you have some scrap of every person who's ever died in you, if whatever you showed me of my mother was real, then you know I'm telling the truth! _She'd_ know I was telling-'

Katara cut herself off and flung herself back as another finger rammed its way through the mist, ripping past her leg. Then the Mother of Faces screamed, in a high-pitched wail and Katara was nearly bowled over from the sound of it. She glanced up and stared. Zuko had wedged the ends of his…'swords' under the edge of the Mother of Faces's central mask and was now pressing down on the hilts, gingerly pushing more of his weight and strength behind it in a delicate balancing act that had his legs braced against the slim curve of her neck.

'Zuko,' Katara whispered, her mind full of terrible tales, of human who challenged the spirits and lost, and suffered fates worse than death as a result. Dimly, she thought of her mother, and the fear of suffering another such loss in her life, causing her feet to tear through the mist.

'NO! Zuko, stop, STOP!'

'She's pleading for you,' Zuko panted, thick and wet, all of him neatly slotted into the junction between the Mother of Faces's neck and shoulder. 'And I'm not above pleading for her and a few things more. You don't want to push me on this. Trust me. Now take us back. Now.'

Katara reached out, even if she was far away, too far away, and light was peeling off beneath the gap Zuko's swords had wedged open between bark-like skin and a pale half-mask. It was bright and green, thick jungle heat crawling off and blasting the atmosphere with something heady and pungent that made something in Katara's head roll round and scream at her to get out of there.

 _My mother wouldn't have_ , Katara thought. And so she lay her hand on the trembling one of the Mother of Faces', both of their knuckles buried deep in the fog.

'Please,' she whispered. 'Don't be like your son. If you have some part of my mother in there, with you, you know what it's like, to do the right thing. This isn't it.'

The Mother of Faces roared. Then arched up, bucking, Zuko still clinging to the corner of her mask. And Katara thought for a moment, in the midst of that bright, green light, she saw her mother, smiling back at her, warm and proud.

The mist became light. bright and warm, stretching round them. And suddenly Katara was gasping again, back in the street, the shattered remains of Jin's favourite fountain scattered around her. People were screaming, scattering out of the nearby buildings, and small as they were, a few were daring to hurl rocks at the Mother of Faces, as her strong, willowy form writhed in the sky above them.

Katara caught a glimpse of Zuko as he was finally bucked off the large shoulder, and gasped at how the colour of the sky bled right through his form as he fell. With horror, the next second, she experienced the sensation of falling more firmly into her own body, the pain of scraped shins and bruised hands blooming into her nerves. She groaned and became aware of the uncomfortable cold squish around her fingers, her eyes blinking, before her sight raced down to spy the earthly, red clothed body next to her, the warmth fading as Zuko's hand remained wrapped firmly round her own.

He had never let go. _He had never let go._

Katara didn't have time to wonder if Mother of Faces had simply ripped their spirits from the bodies so they could journey to the Spirit World, or if it was a by-product of being forced through to it; she was already up on her protesting feet, thrusting Zuko's _physical_ hand away from her own so her arm could swerve through the air and jettison a long tendril of water up to the falling _spirit_ of her boyfriend…a spirit which then proceeded to fall straight through the liquid as though he were no more than a shadow bleeding over and through the tiles on a floor.

Katara clenched her teeth, sought out the similar push and pull of chi, and focused on that familiar spiritual network of clots and energy frissons that rang through a web. She could feel the faint, practically empty thrum of one echoed in Zuko's body beside her, but there was also a wispy form of it in the spirit above. Just enough to cause her water to glow faintly as it soared round to catch Zuko again, and quickly, she looped the end of it round Zuko's spirit as though he were now truly something physical it could touch. Thankfully, the new spiritual resonance her water held, seemed to emit enough of a presence for the properties of Zuko's spiritual form to take notice of. As though the edge of her watery whip had suddenly solidified into ice, it hooked round his waist, pulling him in close and slowing his descent. Katara frowned, lip bit and set in concentration, the ghostly blue tinge of Zuko's spirit eyes meeting her own as she gradually guided him back to his body with relief. It was strange; in the Spirit World, they had seemed as golden as ever.

It was only when all wispy trace of him was gone, sunken back into his rightful body, that she relaxed, wobbling for a few brief impactful seconds, before she collapsed at his side, relief blossoming strongly in her chest as he spat out a breath and rolled over. No blood on his hands, she noticed gratefully, suddenly realising that there was also no jagged wound running down her arm anymore, just a thread of phantom pain, like pins and needles.

'Katara,' Zuko panted out her name. 'Katara, are you alright?'

She squeezed his shoulder, smiling down at him. 'Yes: but now we've got work to do,' she breathed out.

He looked at her, then let out a small nod.

Arms hooking round each other for support, they pushed themselves up off the ground, watching the twisting roll of the Mother of Faces through the sky as rocks thudded into her form, barely glancing off the weave of her limbs. Her neck elongated, like a viper-python's, her face rose, then dipped, like the flickering flash of lanterns in the air, their pale colour unblemished and glowing wanly like the moon set in the sky above her. Her hands, more claw-like than ever before, raked through the tiles around the fountain, not stopping even as they reached the outside of the small building surrounding it, breaking through and causing even more people to spill out of windows and doors before she broke the timber of their bed frames and the bodies that rested within them. Walls creaked and shattered, rubble spilling into the street, and there was a loud, angry cry as a young girl raced out from the throng of people, and, with one impassioned fling of her arms, brought the bristled head of a broom down on the vine-like weave of the Mother's of Faces' side.

'Leave our city alone!'

Zuko tensed, and then his arms untangled from Katara's, and he was off, a spurt of fire under his feet to propel him forward, to land him with enough force into the side of the girl, rolling her down and out of the way of another claw as it defensively raked through the air she had inhabited moments before.

'Jin!' he said urgently, 'get out of here!'

Jin gaped at him, a watery sheen to her eyes. Then she shoved at his chest ineffectively as a shadow reared over her face. 'Look out!'

Zuko spun, as Katara raced forward, and with a sudden and terribly violent hiss of steam, their respective elements streaked forward to barrel into the returning claw. Zuko's fire shattered against the curve of a once-finger, while Katara's water snaked round the tight arch of a wrist, biting and slashing into the bark-like material as though she could reduced it to a stump. But vines spilled forth over the open wounds she ripped into the Spirit's flesh, grew and reformed over the charred shapes Zuko's fire put forth, growing over the holes in the body that clods of earth from the newly arrived Dai Li attempted to wreck into the sides of the Mother of Faces. It was too bad; the Dai Li style style was more effective against human-sized opponents. Though Katara did note that the vines did have to bunch and splinter, in an effort to keep pace with the ninja-like sprawl of the shadowy Dai Li figures that now crawled and flew with all the speed of a spider-fly over the spirit's form. Pests, yes, but this time worthwhile ones.

'Where's the Avatar?' someone still half-awake mumbled nearby. 'Isn't this something he should be dealing with?'

Katara felt a stab of guilt for that, and twisted the loop of her water free from the large wrist she had been attacking it with, as Zuko dragged Jin out of its path again.

'Seriously!' he was hissing at the young girl, the adrenalin wearing off her as she shook under the press of his hands on her shoulders. 'Go home! You've safer there.'

She looked at him blankly. 'You don't get it Le-I mean, your highness,' she informed him archly, and he flinched at that. In another time and place, Katara might even have found that funny. 'You were never a real refugee, or at least, not the way I was! You don't get how important, how meaningful a place like this is to someone like me! How can I abandon it, just because some other spirit decides to invade it and destroy it! Even the Fire Nation never…' and here she trailed off, guilt wrecking her expression.

But at this opened-ended sentence, Zuko did not flinch. He spun round again, this time flinging off a bolt of lightning into the wrist that was currently trying to grow over and absorb the struggling ends of Katara's water whip. The resulting force of it was enough for Katara to jerk the remnants of it free.

'Go home,' he said again gently. 'And be safe.'

He ran from her, missing the empty look on her face as she whispered, 'where?' But Katara saw it, _heard_ it, that plaintive 'where', saw it form from the swing of Jin's opened jaw and the hushed snick of her closing mouth and felt even more guilt stir in her at the sight.

 _Aang's not here,_ she told herself. _So you'll just have to make do._

'Cover me,' she hissed urgently as Zuko, as his stance fell in line with her own, trailing cracks of lighting glistening over the raised stretch of his arms. To which he gave her a firm smile.

'I always do,' he murmured, the promise evident in the fondness in his voice, and Katara relaxed, her feet spreading, palms shifting as her fingers closed. Her water raced out, became a loose, empty of coil of light, more water rushing from the broken fountain to join it and stretch out its curves. And it hung there in the air, spinning round the Mother of Faces, with a warm glow. To which the Mother of Faces screeched and tried to collide against this new light imprisoning her, to break free of its arc, until a heavy rain of lightening spat at her from Zuko, racing out into the space between her and Katara's water, and causing her to rear back in shock for moments, mere _seconds_ …but for just enough of them to give Katara time for what she needed.

Round and round, the familiar push and push falling into her force and Katara grimaced. The chi in the Mother of Faces was terrible, all engulfing, a warm green to the tang of purple Katara had felt stir within Koh's own. And it was dizzying to try and meet and match with her own. Katara's chi was so small, so thin, so _mortal._ The Mother's was like an ocean in comparison, Katara could swim though it for years and never settle it. Not fully.

Still, her water glowed, strong and bright and gold and the green in the Mother of Faces' chi became less erratic, more a steady pulse of protest rather than a raging storm. And then, without warning, cracks appearing in the ruined tiles below Katara's feet and vines spilled forth, tangling over her feet, racing out over her legs. Zuko dove, fire spilling from his palms, neat, careful strokes of his fingers aiming precise knife-like strikes of heat against the places the vines joined the pavement away from Katara's body.

'Keep going,' he hissed at her. 'Don't stop.'

Katara wavered, her arms shook, the weight of the vines around her feet, though now crinkled and black pressing her stance inwards, rather than to the width she needed to be. Then Jin's hand fell on her shoulders.

'Leave us alone!' she called up at the shaking spirit above. 'This place…it's not yours! How dare you come and ruin it!'

There were a few murmurs of agreement here and there from the crowd, and Jin, eyes fierce and wild called, 'this was a peaceful, beautiful spot and how dare, HOW DARE YOU ruin it!'

 _How dare, how dare you ruin it…how dare, how dare you ruin it…_

The echo, the refrain of Jin's words stirred round the ruined square, the sound distorted then re-emerging in the form of many voices, a chorus. The Mother of Faces twirled, her mouths opening and falling, but with no parting remark, no answering plea dropping out of them.

A bird, with peacock feathers for a tail, the head of a pig-chicken, and the stumpy wings of a goldfinch-hawk, stepped forward, its beak gleaming silver, then another one materialised by its side out of a roll of mist. Instantly, an old man in the crowd, at the sight, let out a moan and fell to his knees uttering words and names and prayers Katara had never heard before.

And a lady, far more humanoid in appearance than the Mother of Faces, but with weeds for hair beneath a lily-pad lining her scalp like an ill-made hat, shivered out of the broken fountain, her robes an Earth Kingdom green.

Jin backed away, letting out a frightened little gasp as she stepped closer into Zuko's shadow. But the woman stared at her with a set of kind eyes. 'You often stopped to gift my fountain with flowers,' she told Jin. 'I appreciated them, believe me.'

Then she looked at the Mother of Faces with a puzzled glare. 'I am so much smaller and younger than you,' she said softly. 'I am younger even, than humankind. But it was they, who built me a home, and you, Mother, who destroyed it. You did not even seek my permission before using it as a gateway.' A wry smile appeared on her blue lips. 'Who do you think you are, the Avatar? I suspect he would have had more manners than you.'

And then with a sunny smile, she raised her arms, and water, dyed a far darker shade of murky green than the wave Katara had pulled out of the fountain earlier, burst forth out of the ruined fountain that had been the former spirit's home. It stank like deep pond water, oily with the hint of freshwater fish and waterfowl, but it joined Katara's circling loop with a slick sort of ease, a powerful coil of yellow chi branching out to join the spiritual residence Katara had threaded through her bending.

'Just a loan,' the spirit informed Katara with a wink. 'I don't want you getting too greedy.'

Still, it was enough of a boost. And the Mother of Faces shuddered and held still. _'I…_ 'she said softly, her voice ringing like an old worn bell. _'I am so tired…but my son…he returned and he needs…'_

The vines from her hands, like old carapaces, like insects shedding their husks, fell off, and her fingers spread, an old mask sliding up out of the palm of her right hand, a crack zigzagging through its centre. With a chill, Katara saw that it was the last face she had seen Koh wear before he had disappeared. And with another surge of horror she witnessed the mouth moving, opening and closing with a creak threat often signed an oncoming break in a ceramic tile. 'Mother,' it mouthed emptily. 'Mother, I have come home.'

'You're his family,' Zuko said steadily, not relaxing his stance in the slightest. 'Shouldn't you be helping him rather than looking for people to blame?'

The Mother of Faces had no eyes, and so no tears could she shred. But still, there was something both imploring and miserable in the shape of her masked faces as she said, _'we have not spoken in so long…an eternity has passed and I no longer know who my son is or what shape he wishes to be. It does not feel right.'_

Finally, _finally_ , her chi eased into streaks of gold, a bubbling cauldron of molten lava and Katara relaxed, her water spiralling off into disintegrating flecks of glimmering dust.

'Don't you see?' she asked. 'This is your chance to find out, to actually talk to him. I think he's needed that for…well, the eternity you spoke of.'

Zuko's hand grasped her own and squished her fingers with a gentle strength that filled her heart with warmth.

The Mother stared at them. Truthfully Katara had no idea if Koh could recover; and honestly she didn't really care too much if he never did. But spirits had their own rules, their own standards. And without Aang here, she was hesitant to push against them, unless they were harming anyone.

'Start again,' she said, thinking of how she had dragged herself upright, the day after her mother had died and attempted to make a stew of badly burnt sea-prunes, just so she could coax her brother and father into eating, anything to keep them moving, to keep them warm and alive and not dead like mom, whom she hadn't been fast enough to save. 'Please.'

And without a nod, or acknowledgement of Katara and her words, the Mother of Faces sank back slowly, the stars and the sky blotting out the darkness that fell from her pronged head until there was nothing left of her except a memory.

* * *

The first thing that happened, were the cheers. People raising their arms and yelling, Jin squealing and hugging Zuko, before blushing furiously and then turning to shake both Katara's arms vigorously.

'You did it, you did it, you did it!'

Then, as an old man started whirling a broom above his head, almost throwing his back out as he screamed, 'go on, get outta here, wretched spirits!' Jin turned, a melancholy look dappling her face as she stared out, at the crushed stones and the largely drained whirlpool that was all that was left of her precious fountain.

'Oh,' she said, her sandals sloshing through the water as she started walking towards the former rim of the pool, allowing a hand to trail over the simple scattering of powdered bricks. 'I guess spirits don't need to clear up after themselves, huh?' She fiddled with the sleeves of her robe. 'Too bad I'm not an earthbender.'

'Don't worry,' Katara told her, bending her knees and pushing the water away from where it was lining each crevice and crack in the street. 'I know a few good ones; and I'm sure plenty of people here know a few too.' She made a face. 'Just so long as they're not the Dai Li.'

One of them, gave her cross look, nursing a slightly bloody nose and Katara winced, remembering that a few of them had actually come to help out in the fight. Still. It's not like they were particularly moral people in her opinion.

'I, um, can help you heal that you know,' she offered, raising a glowing palm.

The Dai Li agent turned away with a glower and Katara dropped her hand stung. 'Fine, suit yourself, I guess.'

Zuko was already patrolling round the outskirts of the crowds, checking to see that no one had broken anything of themselves, and Katara spared the broken fountain another sigh. If it had been made of ice, or the rising sun of tomorrow wouldn't have put too much of a melting dent in it, she would have gladly rebuilt the structure. Already though, a few people were stepping out from the crowd, their steps, maybe a little wobbly, but firm enough to start pushing rocks back into place and keep the street clear enough for people to get back to their homes. While others, those who couldn't force the way clear, were getting out brushes and pans, and sweeping aside the smaller debris they weren't in danger of crushing themselves with.

'What a night.'

Katara spun round at the sound of Iroh's voice, her shoulders sinking with relief as she saw the calm expression on his face. 'Um,' she said, eyeing the tray he held on which, perfectly balanced, were several bowls of chilblain. And behind, a few tea-shop workers carrying several trays more.

'We heard all the commotion,' Iroh stated, not seeming surprised at the way Katara practically seized the first bowl her fingers rattled against. 'And thought, maybe people could do with a treat.'

Zuko walked over, quickly, almost fitfully pushing a finger into Katara's hard-won treat and stepping away as she whirled round with a scowl, hunching over the bowl protectively. 'Don't look at me like that,' he said with a frown, after licking his finger as Katara wrinkled her nose. 'You look…'

Katara gave him an even stare.

'…fine.' He finished awkwardly.

Katara smiled grimly. She didn't feel fine. And given the way her hair kept bunching up at the back of her neck, along with several strands that had unravelled from her loopie, not to _mention_ the few lines of frizz cluttering her eyeline…well, she was sure she was a sight, alright.

'We need to give this dessert a better name,' she remarked. 'Not _chilblain,_ that sounds disgusting.'

Not to mention it sounded like something Sokka would come up with, she thought grimly.

But Iroh simply smiled, with only the smallest trace of disappointment in his eyes. 'What would you suggest instead, Katara?'

And Katara frowned, tilting the bowl onto one side so she could scrap up the slosh of melting liquid that was busy running down from one side of the crackly surface of the icy mound. 'Mmm…it's made from milk, right? Tastes creamy, and has a hard crunch like ice…'

Zuko gave her a funny look.

'Growing up with Sokka, you get used to getting a mouthful of ice every now and then. Especially when you're too small to fight back properly.'

He nodded, making an expression that seemed to tell her that he had no clue what she was talking about, and Katara suddenly remembered that he had grown up with Azula. Yikes. She hoped he hadn't dealt with swallowing fireballs or something. Or coal. Knowing Azula, it was probably something much worse.

'Ice-cream,' she pronounced finally.

Iroh made a face. 'I prefer chilblain…'

'Ice-cream,' Zuko repeated. 'Huh. Okay. At least you don't have the same naming sense as your brother.'

Katara frowned and hungrily swallowed down another spoonful. 'Not many people do.'

And despite the chill on her tongue, and the way the cold reached up to fiddle with her brain, to make her wince and run a glowing palm over her forehead, as Zuko shook his head at her and gave her a wry smirk ('Maybe…we should have called it chilpain.' 'Urgh.') Katara felt very, very warm at the sight of everyone coming forward, to nurse bowls of their own against the chest. The looks of marvel, of wonder, as they dipped spoons and sticks and, with one greedy guy, a rice paddle, into the bowl and let them resurface with something they'd never tasted before…

Katara felt something hot in her chest that had nothing to do with what was melting on her tongue.

* * *

'Do you think it's over?' she asked Zuko, later as they crawled under sheets that were not quite silk, kindly provided for them by his uncle in the attic of the teashop. They were Earth Kingdom green, and smelt a little oily, but Katara, remembering a childhood of burning shark-whale blubber to keep warm in the night, buried her nose in the scent, letting it blur alongside the faint aroma of Zuko and that strange spice of him she sensed when he got close enough to slip an arm around her. Like he was doing right now. It travelled over her back, clasping her hip with a secure clamp of his fingers that rested on her skin. Warm, comforting, yet somehow feeling hotter than candle-wax as they lay there, Katara stirred, fighting back the urge to tidy her hair.

'I don't think anything's over with us,' he replied after a moment. Katara could feel him weighing up his words inside his head before he said them. 'Besides, I think you'd be kinda bored if everything went…quiet all of a sudden. You always need something to do or save. It's who you are.'

Katara smashed her cheek against her hand. 'What about you?' she asked, feeling touched at his words; she chose to see them as a compliment, rather than the insinuation of her being a nosy busy-body the way she might have done if those words had come from someone she didn't know so well.

'Me?' he asked. 'Oh, I'm ready to fight. Unfortunately it seems that when you want to save something, you always need to be prepared to fight for it as well.'

Katara shoved an elbow into his side – but gently.

'Alright. Let's save the fighting for tomorrow, okay?'

Zuko snorted. 'Sure. That's if our dreams will let us be.'

Thankfully though, for that night at least, they did.


	15. To grant peace, and make mild

They stayed, at least until the rubble was mostly clear. After that, they left an offering of a lotus flower, and a scented candle which Zuko lit with a graceful pinch of his fingers (Katara felt it was right – she had borrowed chi from a spirit after all), before milling around with a few other people who wove together flowers and lit other forms of incense, eventually setting off for the outside zoo and the long, rolling fields set between rocks and boulders and to an earnest dragon.

'Go!' whined the zookeeper, who in Katara's mind sounded familiar, like a merchant who could yell 'MY CABBAGES' at the top of his lungs. 'Go and take your barbeque-happy beastie with you…'

He sniffed and with a heavy scowl stared out at the wisps of black, burnt shrubbery that now flooded the fields nearby. 'I do one guy, one favour, watch over his business for a couple of days, and my produce for the next harvest goes up in smoke…' he sent a heavy glower in Ran's direction. And Ran, for his part, munched idly on a single green leaf, looking far too content with himself.

Zuko twitched. 'Sorry,' he said, frowning, as Ran coughed, then spat out the leaf in a charred wisp of rubbery phyme. 'I didn't know he ate any kind of vegetable at all.'

The merchant sniffed, turning his nose up at them. 'Get along with you. And you!' he pointed at Katara dramtically, not in the least cowed by the fact that there was a large dragon behind her. Katara was actually kind of impressed. 'I should have recognised you, one of the troublemakers who hates my vegetables. But you've changed your hair, haven't you?'

Katara blinked. He only looked vaguely familiar, but still…

'Sorry,' she said. Though if they had been papayas, well, that would have been quite a different story altogether.

* * *

Home – a _home_ – the palace of the Fire Nation – (and how incredible that Katara could think of it in those terms?) came into view as a glint in the horizon, red and gold, as the sun caught on its finely-built edges, open to all its points and barbed designs, ones Katara had always felt to be a little unfriendly, and a far cry from the rounded slope of the igloos she had grown up inside.

Not that there were any of those anymore back at her other home, she reflected a little wistfully, as the dragon swooped down to deposit them outside the main entrance. Sokka's much loved progress was marching on and leaving her nostalgia behind. In a mere twenty years time would she be able to match _anything_ in her memory to what was left of the South Pole? All those small white buildings and blue tents and the flash of grey of an otter-seal pup as it got loose among their small outhouses, while today the thrive and thrum of their larger town drove it away…

Katara blinked. And saw a pale flash of blue in the sky, as something, an _agile_ something, dropped down to perch on the spire of a rooftop. The glider swirled, the unfamiliar blue of the wingspan catching in a jagged rush of colour against the flaring rays of the sun. Then, under her surprised gaze, Aang unfurled the glider again and swooped down, his feet landing on the courtyard stones in front of them with a pitter-patter of sound that made Katara's heart go _thump_ with apprehension.

Then he raised his eyes to hers. Or rather she raised her eyes to his. He was definitely taller than her, _too tall_ , a churlish part of Katara thought. Why couldn't he stay small, small when things had been so much simpler between them?

But no, that wasn't fair. Not to her or Aang.

'Hi,' he said after a moment, his eyes not so much flickering towards Zuko, who was now glancing between them with an unsure look on his face.

'Hi,' Katara said back awkwardly, hands clutching at each other and she found herself wishing foolishly that she could hide them inside something, anything, or at least give them something to do. She was in dire danger of fidgeting.

Then Aang gave her a small smile, faint, and only vaguely reaching his eyes, but still a smile none the less. And abruptly Katara found herself relaxing. It's Aang, she thought, _Aang_.

'How've you been?' she asked perhaps a tad too brightly, because Aang's smile rapidly retreated back into a non-commital straight line, and Katara could have kicked herself.

'Busy,' he said, clear agitation in his voice. 'I've been helping Toph with some of her students. And well, I say helping, but it's more like her trying to wretch me out of the sky and humiliate me all the time so…' he shrugs. 'Typical Toph behaviour. And I've also attended a few town meetings, sorted a few squabbles. Avatar business.'

Katara nodded, her mind frantically running over the things that had happened to her recently. If Aang had been here a few days then he probably knew about Azula and what she'd put Katara through. It wasn't like she'd sworn Suki and the rest of the palace to secrecy after all.

Aang stared at her. 'But I'm not the only one who's been busy. You've been making waves, Katara. Literally.' He cracked a faint smile at his own joke. 'I've had a few spirits telling me stories. I'm sorry I wasn't there to help with the Mother of Faces.' He looked at her keenly. 'I'm not sure how to ask this, but Sifu Katara'-

And here he offered her a long, lean bow, hands clasped together in a show of respect, and Katara felt her eyes well up with grateful tears. 'Will you mind teaching me your new techniques?'

Katara fought down her emotions, struggling not to smile as she returned the bow. 'It would be my honour, pupil Aang.'

'Just so long as you don't start asking Azula for her new tips and tricks, ' Zuko muttered.

Aang's head re-surfaced from his bow and he cast a slightly frosty look Zuko's way. And the sheer chill of it was enough to start making Katara's heart drop down and leak into her boots.

'Yes,' he said slowly. 'She's been chosen by a dragon? The same as you have, Zuko.' He tipped his head to the side. 'I never learnt any bending apart from air over a hundred years ago, and so much has been lost since I was gone that I've no idea if what Katara and Azula can do was widely practised or known before I went to sleep. If it has been lost, then maybe the spirits, or whatever forces guide them are trying to push the world back into balance.' He shrugged, looking rather unhappy as he did so.

Katara blinked. 'You're talking about…fate?' she questioned unsteadily. 'Or destiny? That's silly. I might understand Azula being chosen since she's a princess and a descendent of Roku to boot, but me…'

Zuko snorted, giving her an impatient look that reeked of fondness all the same, a look that asked her if she was really that dumb. Katara scowled at him in return, well aware that Aang was giving her a similar look, though one slightly more gentle in comparison.

'Um, Katara?' her former pupil asked. 'You were the last surviving waterbender in the South Pole. And you managed to find me _and_ free me, when no other waterbender did or could. I always figured you had a sort of destiny of your own too, like Zuko or I did. It'll be crazy if you didn't. The spirits aren't stupid.'

Katara blinked, then crossly waved a hand in front of her. 'Oh, come on! Koh was not trying to help me in the slightest! And he's the only reason I unlocked this new ability of mine, or even thought up the technique!'

'Yup.' Aang nodded. 'I agree with you there. A lot actually. But spirits don't always know as much as they think they do. And they're like humans in that they're subject to things like destiny and fate in the same way we are, with all these unseen forces and laws that move and influence them, without them even realising. I mean, Koh thought he was all-knowing when he took the face of Umi to punish Avatar Kuruk, but it didn't prevent him being hurt by Kuruk later on, did it? You could argue that Koh was punished as well for his actions.'

Katara sighed. 'Okay, say I accept this; and that's a big 'if.' What does 'destiny' have planned for Azula?'

It's a little strange; Katara had always believed in destiny, because her meeting with Aang didn't make much sense to her otherwise. And yes, she believed, to a certain extent, that everyone had their own destiny that they could unlock or turn away from by choice, or by doing the wrong thing. But she had always pictured hers as being…lesser. And realising that she and Azula had been given abilities that could heal, that Azula could do something with fire other than hurt, was doing strange, complicated things to her temper.

She felt pity for Azula sometimes, true. But she didn't really want to step outside her comfort zone of seeing her as anything other than an intelligent psychopath.

She glanced between Aang and Zuko and saw them staring at each other with clear apprehension on their faces, so obviously they had similar feelings on the matter as well.

She sighed. 'Have you been to see her, yet?'

Aang nodded. 'She…wasn't exactly pleasant. But we had a conversation, yes.' His expression twisted a bit, and Katara grimly wondered what sort of things Azula had been saying to him. Words designed to hurt, most probably. Maybe even a few goading taunts about her and Zuko.

'Well,' she said. 'Since 'destiny' probably says so, let's all go talk to her, together.'

* * *

Faint humming met their ears as they walked down the corridor towards Azula's cell. And a small, weak halo of orange light spooled out from under the accompanying room. Zuko frowned, recognising his mother's voice and Katara felt her pace speed up in response.

Ursa…hadn't dared to speak to Azula before. So this…this was new.

As they rounded the corner, the guard by the door gave them a brief nod of acknowledgement, and the humming, as if by magic, drew itself off into a low murmur.

'Strange,' they heard Ursa say. 'I don't remember you being so keen to hear a lullaby before. You were always one for the war stories.'

Out into the cell they peered, to witness the strange, almost macabre sight of Ursa kneeling by the bars, fingers outstretched between them in order to paint, pale streaks of flesh against the dark fall of Azula's hair; it lay over the floor, the ends of it curling over the risen metal slots in the floor that marked out the boundaries between each bar. And Ursa's hand had drawn itself through there, was practically petting Azula's strands as they rose and curved over her head.

Azula, for her part, was lying there like a dog, eyelids flickering as though trapped in a restless sleep, part of her pallet clumsily manoeuvred over to the cell bars to keep most of her body from rolling over onto the hard stone floor.

Aw, Katara wanted to say, how sweet. Instead, she kept her mouth firmly closed.

'Mom?' Zuko asked, a nervous quaver present in his voice.

Ursa raised her head, a small smile on her face as the warmth of it reached up to spill over into her eyes that were, for once, looking fairly peaceful. The same however, could not be said of Azula's which flickered open, sly as a pygmy-goat-hare, in an instant. She twisted upright, unfurling her limbs quickly as though she had never been asleep, and perhaps she never truly had.

In response, Aang's hand dived through the air, a sudden gust flying past it to reach out and slam Azula into the cell wall; but not before, her fingers had pushed through the bars, up past her mother's frozen hand to fasten their way around her wrist. With a choked-off cry, Ursa was dragged along in her daughter's wake to slam head-first against the bars, with enough force to cause heavy bruises to erupt over her chin and forehead.

'Mom!'

Azula, who had lost none of her fighting strength, kicked off against the wall, the barrier of Ursa's body now lying sprawled against the bars, and helping in providing a welcome respite from the blast of imprisoning air. Her other hand snaked through the bars, to grasp the side of her mother's face, and then there was fire curving from her other hand, slow, steady methodical curls of it that were quite unlike anything else Katara had ever seen before.

'Stop!' she called, her hands finding Zuko and Aang's shoulders and yanking at them in warning. 'That's no regular fire-bending!'

Azula's mouth quirked.

'Clever peasant.' She shook her head, the ratty fall of her hair flying free from her eyes, so she could glare at them. 'And with more freedom than me to boot. I could do with some of that.'

'Let her go, Azula.' Zuko spoke from between clenched teeth. 'You had your chance; if you wanted to keep your freedom, you should have stayed away.'

Azula's mouth curled. 'Oh Zu-zu…everyone wants freedom. Take Mother, for instance. She wants to be free of the guilt for abandoning us to Father. She wants to be rid of that nasty thoughts that yammer at her, that tell her that she's part of the reason I grew up to be such a monster.'

With a sickening lurch to her stomach, Katara realised that Ursa's eyes were tracing over the shapes of Azula's flames with the eager wonder of a child, without any fear or understanding to help widen their gaze and turn the expression older and far more accustomed to the face of the woman it belonged to.

'Azula,' she said softly, horror chilling her tone. 'What have you done?'

There was a cruel twist to Azula's lips.

'Why…only what Mother herself wanted.' Then she laughed and shoved Ursa away from her. 'When she's in here she only sees the daughter she wants to, one's that not quite so… _monsterous._ ' Azula said that last word with a sneer, lip curling in disgust. 'This new, or well, should we say _old_ style of firebending, doesn't help steady minds and chi; it helps melt them, burns away all the parts you don't want to keep.' Azula shrugged. 'You wanted to Mother to be happy, Zu-zu. Well. Now she truly is.'

* * *

Katara stood behind Ursa; the other woman sat on a chair, hands loosely falling over the wooden carving of the dragon heads lodged into their arms. Katara took a breath, and then up rose her hands, ready to paste themselves over Ursa's temples, as water flew up from the bowl beside her to encase them with a wavering blue glow. Katara could read the chi that crowded Ursa's mind this way; she had done something similar when she had helped Jet recall his true memories while he was stuck under the hypnotic trap of the Dai Li. And…

Katara bit her lip. Because nothing was evidently wrong. The chi rolled round Ursa's head, pathways steady and calm. They were like gold beads rolling down a thread that had been firmly looped round into a necklace, a fine one, with not a scrap of space loose enough to let a single one wobble and fall off.

'Ursa,' said Katara. 'Try to think back. What did you and Azula talk about?'

A pleasant smile alighted on the other woman's lips. 'Why…everything. I apologised for not being stronger, for not being brave enough to visit her immediately. And…I'm not sure how it happened. But my daughter, Azula, she smiled at me. Said she wanted to show me a new trick. And well, it was wonderful! She had always spent so much time practising to get stronger, that to see her do artistic firebending for the wonder of it, without trying to hurt anyone…' Ursa stopped and frowned. 'Well, it just felt so comforting to sit there and watch them pass over and behind the bars. And I…I feel a lot better than I have for a long time now.'

Katara paused. 'How do you feel about Azula?' she asked.

Ursa frowned. 'Sad. Sad that she's locked up. She never did like being restricted.'

'And…and how do you feel about Azula, about the way she is, as a person?'

A complicated look passed over Ursa's face. 'Sad, like I said. Horribly sad. She's fierce, firecer than I would like. But…I don't think there's anything I could have done to prevent it. The way she turned out, I mean.' A horribly mellow smile crossed over Ursa's face, turning it taunt. 'She's a monster. But I think I know now, there it never would have turned out any different. No matter what I had done.'

Katara's hands dropped away. 'But Azula said…' she started, then trailed off, horror etched into her expression as she turned to meet Zuko's gaze.

His lips, quite unwillingly, twitched. 'Azula always lies.'

* * *

When they raced back to the cell, they encountered pandemonium – half the cellblock was crushed, fallen into rubble, with only Aang's quick earthbending stomps and the tugs of fierce wind directed from his twirling staff being enough to prevent the rest of the palace from being dragged into a new landslide.

And Azula was almost gone, transformed into a distant spec of black and red, colours that clashed against the back of a familiar blue dragon that soared up into the sky in an ever-changing spiral. Left behind, miles away, Zuko's hand reached out, impossibly clawing against his sister's small, vanishing shape, as though the motion could ever possibly be enough to get her back.

Then he turned.

'She's gone,' he said between gritted teeth. 'Again.' He cast a half-hopeful look over to the stables, down to where the coiling red of Ran roamed. But the dragon merely turned away, as though to say 'not my problem'.

Katara glared at it, hand on hips, backing away half-a-step when it looked at her from the corner of its eye and gave her a contemptuous snort in return.

Aang shook his head sadly, helping a fallen palace servant nearby to her feet.

'As your Uncle would say; destiny is a funny thing.'

Zuko grimaced. 'Not to me, it isn't.'

'Maybe,' said Aang hopefully, his expression earnestly turned towards the sky after Azula. 'She'll teach other people what she's learnt.'

Katara grimaced. Sure, she thought grimly. But not to help anyone. Sighing, she recalled what Aang had said about the world wanting to achieve balance, using spirits and people as its unwitting pawns. But who said balance was primarily good? Wasn't it about keeping yin and yang, chaos and order in harmony, without one outweighing the other?

Katara thought about it some more and grimaced. She and Azula were two very different people with opposing ideologies; people who fought each other, often at vital points in certain battles where the tides of history could have easily changed for good.

Who better, she thought glumly, to balance each other out?

* * *

Teaching Aang was a welcome respite. She got him to practise on her, to feel out the pathways that branched off inside her body, that travelled and spun and filled her with life. He grimaced, struggling; using healing in waterbending had been a gift that had passed him by, something that he couldn't readily use, and Katara's technique was heavily reliant on the same mental-mapping out of the human body such healing required visualisation of.

After a while, he paused and sighed.

'It's like Toph's metal bending; there's a component here that I'm not getting. It feels…closed off, somehow.'

He looked at her, his eyes a steady, steady gray. Even his face seemed like a void of skin, with no readily apparent expression staring back at her, and Katara had to work hard not to let her hand claw over her mouth in horror.

'Like you,' Aang said, his voice falling into a faint hum of annoyance. 'You've been closed off from me for a while, haven't you Katara? We've been closed off from each other for a long time.'

Katara closed her eyes. She thought of Azula and Ursa, and their complicated, tangled feelings for each other, how they failed to read each other clearly, how they kept missing each other somehow. She didn't want Aang and her to be like that. Eyes still closed, she stepped forward and fumbled her way into his arms and instantly felt him freeze around her, arms transformed into wooden logs at his side.

'Katara? What?!'

'Ssssh,' she said. 'I'm sorry, Aang, I am. We just need time. Lots of it.'

She held her breath, only releasing it once she feel Aang's hand tentatively start to trail over her hair, coming to rest back over her shoulders.

'I still…' he said, then stopped and swallowed. 'I don't think I can stop loving you,' he confessed, his voice turning thick and sinking into such misery that Katara's arms fastened into an even tighter knot at the curve of his spine. 'I've tried. The spirits know, I've tried! But I don't know how to stop, Katara.'

In some odd way, maybe Aang could have benefited from Azula's new 'gift.' Katara shuddered at herself for even considering it and rapidly chased the thought away.

'It will,' she said firmly. 'It will.'

For if there was thing Katara had never run short of, it was hope. She had got over Jet, had, in her own smaller way, got over Aang and she knew Aang could work through this too, the long, slow way round. Just like everybody else in the world had to.

She smiled thinly to herself.

'I'm sorry Aang, but if there's one thing I know, I can't just heal this for you.'

Aaang sighed and stepped away from her, dragging himself reluctantly out of her arms. 'I know,' he said. Then finally, and quite thankfully, his face broke out into a wan smile. 'Don't worry; I helped end a hundred year war didn't I? I'm sure I can work this out too!'

Katara smiled back at him, relief blossoming inside her. 'That's right,' she replied. 'And I'm not about to start doubting you now!'

* * *

Despite that, things were still stiff between them. Katara caught Aang's eye at inopportune moments, caught him when she and Zuko drifted into each other's spaces too frequently, when their robes nestled against each other in the garden, under the shadows of tree branches, and against the vibrant background hues of fire-lilies.

So she wasn't too surprised when he chose to leave them again, after only a few days.

'Well,' Zuko said, watching Appa drift out of sight, his tail becoming entangled with a cloud. 'We've got…theories from the Avatar and an adventure from my Uncle. But nothing really concrete, wouldn't you say?'

Katara stared at the tangled green of the garden, her eyes alighting on the quicksilver flaps of a moth-butterfly as it drifted from flower to flower, the delicate curl of its tongue unrolling down into the pollen sac.

'I think maybe that's the point,' she said finally. And before Zuko could ask her what she could have possibly meant by that, she chose to mirror the butterfly-moth, turning into him a though he were a flower; capturing his neck with her hands, she dove forward, lips on his, pushing and pushing, tongue unfurling into his mouth.

Heat rose, because all of him was always so _hot_ , could make her hot, and he rolled beneath her, hands reaching up to push through her hair, to weave their streaks of cunning, curling heat through the base of their roots and into the back of her skull.

That's life, she wanted to say to him. It never gives us answers. It never told me why my mother had to die, never told us why Hama and so many waterbenders in the South had to suffer until I was born. I doubt it's going to tell us why it wants Azula and me to wage war on each other now.

Instead she said it by fighting him with her mouth, by feeling the air on her skin, and him at her hair, at her neck, fighting back at her. All Katara really knew how to do in the end was fight, with life, for life, against life and all it threw at her.

It was a good job Zuko did to.

After a few moments Zuko drew back, gold eyes snapping at her with a welcome heat in their depths, that sent tingles of electricity through her skin.

'I don't there's any point either, when it comes to you,' he said. 'You're getting as bad as my Uncle.'

Katara rose back on her haunches and sniffed down at him.

'Good,' she said. 'If one of us it's going to be the wise one, who actually knows what they're doing, it's definitely going to be me.'

Zuko's lips twitched. And then he rose up again, his chest knocking into her with the force of a wave as he bowled her over and sent her crashing back into the grass.

'My hair!' she protested, wiggling under him, hands fumbling around to unfasten the small scratches of tiny twigs she could feel sticking into the back of her neck. 'Zuko, this is the first time I've tried this particular hairstyle!'

'Oh?' said Zuko with a wide, wild grin. 'I thought you were the one who actually knew what they were doing? Didn't you see this coming?'

And then he bent down to kiss away her frown.


	16. This wonderful life I had made

A few years later, over the white slopes Katara raced, her hair streaming out behind her as the furs of brown and grey, too blurred to be distinct, rose up from the entrances of the igloos they guarded to grab at her arms. Katara panted, yet managed to keep running without the familiar burn of pain in her lungs to hobble at her. The ground was powder under her boots, yet made no familiar crunch of snow as her feet touched it, and the air failed to gnaw at her, the way it _should_ , as she continued to race. Up and down, went her arms, rowing against the bristly furs that touched them and Katara fought, her arms muscled and defined by her training, by her experience in fights, like the flare of a roaring flame, refusing to die out.

Then there were tugs at her hair, large, gentle unmistakable hands, only slightly bigger than her own, but the voice that accompanied them was years out of date, falling into the same, warm, croon that had haunted her for years, ever since she had run away and left their owner to die.

'Stay, Sweetie, stay. You love me enough to do that, don't you?'

Katara gasped, froze, and tripped as the furs wove their way round her wrists and manacled her to the walls of a nearby igloo. She was stretched thin between the round domes of the village she had once worked and run and played through, and she narrowed her eyes, trying to peer into the white of the snow.

 _'I gave you that face you know,'_ another voice, also familiar, said _. 'I placed it into your mother's belly, crafted it in her womb. It helped you gain the gift of the Avatar's heart. And the fire prince's too.'_

The snow peeled away, and the Mother of Faces rose up like a hurricane. _'I cannot rule over death,'_ she said. _'I cannot bring your mother back to you, the way you forced my son back to me. But I can bring her face back into this world. I can re-gift it to your daughter, if you have one, or the daughter of one of you or your brother's descendants. Would you like that?'_

Katara stared up at the grand spirit and her imposing faces and felt an ache deep down in her heart.

'No,' she said, the dream-like impression of her tongue feeling thick and heavy in her throat. 'That would be…cruel. Craft new faces, please, for each one of our descendants. They deserve their own.' She hesitated. 'But…maybe…can you make people remember faces?'

The faces of the Mother of Faces, tilted sideways. _'I can make faces re-visit people in dreams.'_

Katara gazed up at her, hope breaking over her own face. 'Then…I want you to show my brother, Sokka, our mother's face. Can you do that?'

The Mother of Faces inclined her heads. And then she was gone.

* * *

Katara woke with a start.

'What's wrong?' Zuko asked, swivelling round beneath the sheets, his hands alighting on hers in an instant. His eyes quickly traced the slick sheen of her face, and the rolls of her breaths as they came out of her mouth, heavy and fast, like an animal's, with obvious concern. 'You're okay. I'm here.'

Katara turned and rolled into him, her face pressing against his neck, so hard she could wear the shape of his throat against her eyes.

'Yes,' she managed to whisper. _Yes_ , she thought. _I'm here._

* * *

I'm here, she thought hours later, that same day. I'm really here.

And so were all the people she loved. Kiyi, showing off red and yellow flames against the sky, Siki and Suru watching nearby, scorn wrinkling their face until they attempted to throw water over Kiyi's face. Pakku watching over them both with disapproving eyes, ready to step in and freeze anybody solid who got too carried away. Gran-Gran, with her smiling face and wavering eyes, caught between tears as she looked up at Katara and glowed. _You've done it,_ her expression seemed to say. _The way I did when I was your age. You escaped the prison our home could have been for you and found yourself._

Katara swallowed down the lump in her throat.

Ursa beamed up beside, her, her husband smiling jovially at her side. There were less stress lines on her face, but whether that was due to Katara's healing sessions, or Azula's 'therapy' sessions in the prison cell, she couldn't say. And of course, Dad was here, with Malina, both looking pleased.

And Toph was…not smiling exactly. _Leering_ might be a better word. Aaaand she already had her mouth stuffed full with spirits knows what. Sokka was not being much help in that department either, of course, though Suki looked like she was two seconds away from confiscating the bowl he had managed to grab. He smiled brightly at her, over Suki's dangerously quick hands, his mouth full and cheeks bulging, and Katara wondered, fitfully, if he was happier, if seeing their Mom again, gave him any kind of closure. Perhaps one day, she would be brave enough to stir up the subject with him. But not today.

No, today was for her. Even if Mom, the one person she most ached to see the smile of, couldn't see it.

None of that now, she told herself, as she turned round to witness the smile breaking out over Zuko's face. Here's another equally precious sight.

Zuko…

Face aglow, like the moon that gave her strength, the puckered edges of his scar catching the shimmering white reflection of sunlight as it glanced across his face and glowed a healthy red: _Zuko._ Perhaps once Katara had found his scar ugly, found it terrifying, an image of a bad man who wanted to steal Aang away from her the same way the Fire Nation had often stolen away the people she loved. Not anymore. She touched it now, traced it with the tips of her fingers, as Iroh droned on by her side, reciting verses he had imprinted upon his mind since boyhood. They were traditional Fire Nation verses, but that was fine; Katara had gotten Aang to recite a few traditional Water Tribe ones as well.

He stood nearby, the smile alive in his eyes and well and present on his face, his robes long and tangled around him in flares of orange. He seemed well enough, happy enough. As strong as she had always known he would be.

Would he one day take up a position similar to the one she and Zuko were now standing in, in front of someone he could honestly say he loved? She hoped so.

Iroh said something about a dragon, maybe a bird as well; she shouldn't have done, but Katara had successfully tuned him out, too fixated on her feelings and how they sprang up and twisted themselves round in knots inside her, every time she glanced on a well-loved face here. She was sure it was the same for Zuko, as he reached out to touch the Fire-lilies in her hair, caught and woven into the thin plaits that straddled the circumference of her skull, before the rest of her curls dropped away beneath it in fierce brown waves. Had the flowers been allowed to stay their natural red they would have clashed horribly with the blue of her gown as it shimmered out beneath her, taking full advantage of the white hot sunlight. As it was, Sokka, proving himself to be a better craftsman than an artist, had dyed them an icy white, springing some glittery blue power he had produced crystallised out of flask at the borders of their petals. Katara had loved them, each and every one. They were unique; no Water Tribe bride, in her memory had ever worn anything like it.

She blinked suddenly, as Zuku, red to her blue, leaned in with a teasing grin and swiped his lips against hers.

'Not paying attention?' he murmured against her. 'Should I be offended? And on our wedding, of all things?'

Katara fought back her scowl.

'You should be happy,' she murmured back. And for once, she gave him a rare concession of unbridled honesty. 'It's because I can't take my eyes off you.'

He laughed against her, wide and deep, his mouth opening as though he wanted to swallow her whole; and Katara took full advantage of that, pushing back as he pulled her into him with a tug of his arms.

 _Push, pull, hot, cold, smile, scowl._ Water and fire.

Honestly though, Katara couldn't picture anything different about them. Nor would she want to. And as unwelcome as parts of their love had felt at times, right now, every bit of it felt as cathartic as it should.

* * *

 _ **Notes:**_ It's done! I've always wanted to write a chaptered Zutara story and now I can finally, finally say I've done it!


End file.
